Coming off the success of 2014’s Neighbors, in which he played an oft-shirtless lunkhead with a tendency to dive into situations beyond his control, Zac Efron is now taking on the role of an oft-shirtless lunkhead with a tendency to dive into situations beyond his control. Variety reports the actor has signed on to star in the upcoming action-comedy adaptation of Baywatch, the hit ’90s TV series that also blended acton and comedy, albeit mostly unintentional versions of the latter.
The long-gestating project now seems to be swimming along, as the casting of Dwayne Johnson turned the comedy into a more action-skewing vehicle. Still, the hiring of director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) implies the studio still wants some laughs, probably in the 21 Jump Street vein, since that is now the benchmark for all reboots of outdated pop-culture artifacts. While production is scheduled for early 2016, there’s still no word on the actual story, meaning it may be a rather slapdash assemblage, which would really be in keeping with the original’s sense of plotting.
Between this, his “I’m changing the world as an EDM DJ” movie We Are Your Friends, his Robert De Niro comedy Dirty Grandpa, the bros-bein’-bros Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates, and the inevitable Neighbors 2, Efron is really running the gamut of types of bro it’s possible to represent on film. Look for his coffee table book, Bros In The Knows, featuring a complete typology and accompanying pictorial depiction of bro-dom, sometime next year.