Ever since Zac Efron decided to become A Serious Actor (and Chace Crawford decided he’d rather do time in a Plano jail, which is sort of redundant), the fate of Craig Brewer’s Footloose remake has hung perilously in the balance, suggesting that the film may not be the generation-defining teenaged dancing epic we desired—nay, needed. But all hope is not lost: After testing more than 1,000 actors, Brewer has settled on his Kevin Bacon substitute, casting mostly unknown Center Stage 2 star and professional dancer Kenny Wormald in the pivotal role of Ren, the well-meaning rebel who teaches a repressed Bible belt town how to feel again.
Wormald will be joined in the film by Proactiv spokesperson Julianne Hough as his love interest Ariel, with Dennis Quaid playing chief antagonist Reverend Moore, who doesn’t much cotton to the temptation of thrusting your pelvic region to the rhythms of Satan’s rock music. While Brewer promises to “be true to the spirit of the original film,” he’s also warned that he’s “still gotta put my own Southern grit into it and kick it into 2011,” which means they’ll dance to hip-hop music and he should probably just say that.