Zac Efron has decided it’s time to leave behind frat parties, put away childish dildos, and—like many a bro looking toward his future—pursue a career in legal thrillers. The Hollywood Reporter says Efron has signed on to produce and star in The Associate, a film based on John Grisham’s 2009 realization that he somehow hadn’t used that title yet. Efron will play a recent Yale Law School grad who’s blackmailed by a group of shadowy criminals into joining the world’s largest law firm, where he’s forced to spy on a billion-dollar lawsuit between defense contractors—a scenario that promises all the exciting action of digging through files while looking anxiously at a doorway, and making desperate phone calls while wearing an askew necktie that has become synonymous with the John Grisham name. It also puts Efron in the lineage of actors that graduated from Grisham Movie Law School in the ’90s—like Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, Denzel Washington, Matt Damon, and Chris O’Donnell—which gave them the skills in pretending to be employable that movie employers look for.
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