Zac Efron’s on Fire, While Going Back to The Future

Zac Efron is growing up. And you know what? Good for him. The High School Musical star is making a leap into more mature roles. According to Deadline Hollywood, Efron has just made a deal with Universal for the spy thriller Fire, an adaptation of a graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis that was published by Image Comics. Take that Disney!

Efron will play a college student who is recruited by the CIA, only to find out that he has been trained for a program that creates expendable agents. Efron will also serve as an executive producer on the project and according to the source, he’s partially responsible for Universal picking it up.

As if that weren’t enough, Efron has made a separate deal at Warner Bros. to star in a Back To The Future-like film. The project is a blend of two pitches from Assassination of a High School President writers Tim Calpin and Kevin Jakubowski, and director Nick Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Efron will star and once again serve as executive producer.

Efron may be trying really hard to stay in the game, but so far it seems like he’s making all the right moves. His last film Me and Orson Welles, wasn’t a box office success, but it showed that he can be more than just Troy Bolton.

The transition from child star to adult actor must be really hard because a lot have tried and failed. It seems like Efron is eager to make that jump, and these two new choices are going to help push him in the right direction.

What do you think of Efron’s latest career move?