Zac Efron dumps teen-beat for more adult projects

[HMG] – Several actors achieved fame at a young age, which was gone by their twenties. Zac Efron is determined not to be among them.

Now 22, Zac has just inked a deal with Universal to star in a spy thriller adapted from its comic-book roots by Michael Bendis, who also created the hugely successful ‘Ultimate Spider Man.’ Zac will play a college student who gets recruited by the CIA — only to find they plan to make him an expendable resource.

Meanwhile, over at Warner, Zac has another new deal to be the lead in a ‘Back to the Future’-type movie  No details as yet but Deadline says it’s a mongrel – made up of two projects the studio already had in the works.

Zac’s decision to bail on the ‘Footloose’ remake raised some eyebrows, but opinions soon changed when he signed as the lead in Universal’s ‘The Death And Life Of Charlie St. Cloud.’ Here he plays a young man torn between grieving for the death of his brother, and chasing the girl of his dreams [Kim Basinger.]

He once said ‘I like my women like I like my peanut butter: chunky.’ Looks like no-one told Kim?

It takes guts to make a leap of faith on this scale. If you want to see if he makes it, check out ‘Death and Life…’ It opens on June 11th…