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Zac Efron to Star in The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

by Alex Billington
March 25, 2009

We just announced earlier this week that Zac Efron was ditching the Footloose remake, and at the time, we didn't know what his replacement gig would be. Variety is reporting that Efron will re-team with 17 Again director Burr Steers on an adaptation of Ben Sherwood's novel "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud". The book is about caretaker at a cemetery who manages to have weekly meetings with a younger brother (read: ghost) whose accidental death he feels was his fault. The most current draft of the script was written by Craig Pearce, with Burr Steers working on polishing up the script for Efron's involvement.

I'm not familiar with the book, but it's getting great reviews on Amazon. "'Charlie St. Cloud' is a tougher read in that it deals so openly with death, loss, and well, it is set in a cemetery. I finished the book in tears (as usual with this writer) and cried a couple of other times.... What amazes is that this kind of story--with life, death, the afterlife, etc... is so deftly pulled off. It largely avoids being maudolin or cliched. It is something of a miracle that this story works so beautifully." It sounds like a good book, somewhat similar to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, but I'm not sure about the direction it's going with Efron and Steers.

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athena

It will be great to see Zac Efron take on this role. This is a change from the HSM trilogy. Before he began doing the HSM movies, he had more serious roles on television...so now, he'll have a world of transition to the more mature audience screens.
katie ramsey-smith

zac u shoud sssssooooooooo do footlosexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Krista

I am actually excited to see Zac in a serious role. I enjoyed him in Hairspray alot, and it will be nice to see if he actually has talent or not.
athena

I've just finished reading the Death and life of Charlie St. Cloud and I think regardless of Ben Sherwoods imagery of Charlie, Zac would be the right person to fill this role. It will be interesting on how Burr Speers will create the role for Zac...I hope he won't leave out the sensual scenes between him and the young lady....This could be a great character for Zac to portray...he's conflicted, charming, dutiful, and the story itself is complex and the characters show vividly on the pages. I can't wait for the filming to begin. I hope they don't change the script so much that it creates another type of movie...not to humourous, just enough while dealing with such a serious subject.