Today's Film News: Moving On, Moving Up

By Sarah Sluis

Moving On to more adult roles, Zac Efron has decided to star in a remake of the Swedish film Snabba Cash. I checked out the trailer on YouTube (there's also one with English subtitles) and was hit first with a Gatsby-esque, classy version of excess (lawn party!) followed by the plumbing vans, violence, and dark lighting typical of drug movies. Over the next two minutes, there's more violence, sex, some chase scenes and people fighting with each other, all lit with saturated, luminous cinematography and accompanied by a Swedish music soundtrack. No wonder it inspired a bidding war. After bowing out of Footloose for fear of being typecast into singing and dancing teen roles, Efron has found a project that's exactly the opposite of tweeny-bopper. While fellow Disney star Miley Cyrus recently starred in a PG "transition" movie with a family-oriented, romance-lite plot, The Last Song, Efron has chosen the complete opposite route. Which one will work? Since the project has a "short fuse" clause (the best dealmaking tool ever for impatient fans) and must be made within a certain time period, or the rights expire, we'll get to see Efron soon.

Moving Up: Joss Whedon, creator of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series, "Firefly," "Dollhouse" and others, the kind of series that inspired fan backlashes upon their cancellation, has a huge cult following. I should know, because he's an alumnus of my university and when he visited, people started waiting in line hours before he showed up for a talk, and isn't waiting in line ridiculously early a hallmark of geek culture? The geek approval makes him that much more valuable of a commodity. As of this week, he's attached to direct The Avengers, and, today in the blogosphere, little voices say he's involved in Captain America too (they're both Marvel projects). With the support of the fan community, his work will be treated with additional reverence and considered a step above the usual product--that is, if he isn't done in by the sky-high expectations his fans will have created. The choice of Whedon is a great move. He has done serialized and spin-off work and created original, memorable characters. His only feature directing credit, Serenity, was a spin-off of "Firefly." Since The Avengers is kind of a meta-superhero tale, with all the stars (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, The Fury, and maybe The Hulk) of other comic books coming together, it would be a good idea to have a creative person with their hands in more than one film, and who has experience extending stories across different mediums.