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Emma Roberts Heads to 'Empire State' with Hemsworth & Johnson

by Ben Pearson
March 12, 2012
Source: Variety

After a pretty conventional start to her acting career in movies like Nancy Drew, Aquamarine, and Hotel for Dogs, Emma Roberts is finally stepping out of her older relatives' collective shadow. (Eric Roberts is her dad and Julia Roberts is her aunt.) She starred in Scream 4 last year and turned in a pretty solid performance in this year's Sundance crowd-pleaser Celeste and Jesse Forever opposite Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg. Now Variety reports the young up-and-coming actress has joined a heist thriller called Empire State, in which she will play a love interest for Liam Hemsworth from The Hunger Games.

Based on real life events from 1982, Empire State tells the story of two childhood friends (Hemsworth and someone else yet to be cast) from Astoria, N.Y., who plan to rob an armored car depository, with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson playing the NYPD detective out to stop them. Roberts will play a waitress that catches the eye of Hemsworth's character, which sounds like a pretty easy gig for her based on that admittedly simple description. We know Johnson can pull off this role in his sleep because he played essentially the same character in Fast Five, so there's no problem there.

However, the younger Hemsworth has yet to prove himself as an action star, but with The Hunger Games and this summer's The Expendables 2 coming soon, not to mention a forthcoming he's 3D remake of Arabian Nights . he'll have multiple chances to make his mark in the genre before this project hits theaters. It certainly seems that Hollywood is trying to turn him into the next Taylor Lautner or Sam Worthington though hopefully with better acting results. Thoughts?

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