"Knock knock... who's there? Your heart."

Thanks to the success of this year’s foul-mouthed and R-rated comedies like Horrible Bosses, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids, Friends with Benefits, and that other one with Ashton Kutcher that came out first but was probably worse, studios seem to be digging pretty hard to find the next blockbuster comedy idea. So it makes perfect sense that they’d take a trip back to the Judd Apatow farm to harvest the latest ideas of Andrew Cohen and Brendan O’Brien.

Their latest project is a rated R comedy starring, not shockingly, Seth Rogen and, actually shockingly, Zac Efron. According to Cinema Blend, Rogen would play your average Joe, living his vanilla life in Anytown, USA, when all of a sudden – record scratch – a bunch of frat boys move in next door to him. Efron plays the lead pledge trainer, hell master, or elephant walker and hijinks ensue.

I can almost see the pitch now…

Universal Exec: “So do you guys have any big ideas that you’re working on?”
Andrew Cohen: *takes big bong rip* “Uh yeah, like, Seth Rogen plays this dude…”
Brendan O’Brien: *takes big bong rip* “And he’s, like, doing something funny…”
Universal Exec: “OK, yeah, this sounds great. Who else is in it?”
Cohen: *exhales* “I don’t know, like, Zac Efron or somebody.”
Universal Exec: “Here’s a blank check, you glorious c*cksuckers!”

That idea netted Cohen and O’Brien an unspecified 7-figure amount (each!), while Rogen will receive $8 million to star and another unspecified 7-figure amount to produce. Meanwhile, the writers for Adam Sandler’s next project were just paid in Fruit Roll-Ups and nap time.

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If you’re new here, there’s this game we play, where we recreate the plot of crappy movies using only expository quotes from its reviews (NO ANALYSIS!).  As it turns out, the plots of bad movies are generally pretty hilarious on their own. Today’s movie is Charlie St. Cloud, starring Zac Efron.  I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that I’ve been waiting for this moment for three months.  THANK GOD, IT’S FINALLY HERE!  PILOT MY SAILBOAT, ZAC EFRON! PLAY BALL WIT YA DEAD BROTHAH!

As Charlie, Efron plays catch every day at sunset with his younger brother, Sam. The problem? Sam died in a car accident. (Rolling Stone)

We meet Charlie at his peak — King of the Quincy, Washington small-boat sailors, headed to Stanford on a sailing scholarship.  (OrlandoSentinel)

Yeah, Mom has to work two jobs to keep them going, but Charlie and his somewhat spoiled kid brother are lucky kids with bright futures. (OS)

Then, graduation night — “Kegger at the Point tonight!” — a car accident, and Sam is gone. (OS)

Charlie was at the wheel. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Charlie dies too — at least in spirit. (Entertainment Weekly)

But a devout Catholic paramedic (Ray Liotta) willed him back to life. (OS)

Charlie’s life derails. (ChicagoTribune)

Instead of heading off to Stanford to realize his dream of becoming a sailing champion, he stays home (EW)

…to become a hermit-like groundskeeper at the cemetery where Sam is buried.  (CT)

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For a time, there was the possibility that Disney Channel super twink Zac Efron would turn his teen idol fame into a legitimate movie career.  Let’s face it, no one wants that.  Luckily, it seems more and more that he’s gone the almost-Lifetime movie route, starring in the upcoming Charlie St. Cloud, which isn’t a Nicholas Sparks novel, but if it doesn’t make at least as good a plot-recreated-with-reviews post as Miley Cyrus’ sea turtle party, I’ll be sorely disappointed.  I’ve been waiting months for this.  “Listen to ya dead brothah, Chahlie!  Help that sailor girl find her way home!”

Now from Vulture comes word that Efron will jumping from a movie that looks like a Nicholas Sparks movie to an actual Nicholas Sparks movie.  God bless that kid for the material he gives me.

Vulture hears that he is in negotiations to play a former Marine in Warner Bros.’ forthcoming adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’s novel The Lucky One. This would be the seventh Sparks novel to make it to the big screen (just eight more to go!); Efron would play the titular “One,” who returns from three tours in Iraq to (where else?) North Carolina. There he searches for a mysterious woman in a random snapshot he found — a snapshot he believes was his good-luck charm throughout the second Gulf War. The Lucky One is being produced by Sparks’s own lucky charm, Denise DiNovi, who’d previously brought the author’s Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, and Nights in Rodanthe to the big screen.

Hey, does anyone know what the rest of that block quote said?  I couldn’t hear anything after “former Marine” because I was laughing too hard.  I can’t wait for his supporting turn in “Hannah Montana: CIA Physicist.”

This is the trailer for Charlie St. Cloud (formerly “The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud”), starring Zac Efron, directed by gay dominatrix (I’m guessing) Burr Steers, who previously handled Efron in 17 Again.  It’s basically Ghost as written by Nicholas Sparks.  Efron is the comically saintly Charlie St. Cloud, who sails boats, loves his brother, and probably reads to old people when he’s not busy feeding deer out of his hand.  He especially likes teaching his little brother baseball, and he loves Jeeeeezus, and America tooo…

“I’ll practice with you, every day until I leave for Stanford.”

But remember, this is a Nicholas Sparks (ish) story, so the very mention of college (like say, Juilliard) serves only as a plot device to show how much a character is giving up when they choose family instead.  So then, just when everything seems perfect, Charlie and his lil’ bro get in a car crash.  His brother dies, but Charlie gets revived, and when he wakes up, HE CAN SEE DEAD PEOPLE.  Including his dead brother.  So Charlie becomes a caretaker at the cemetary, where he can finish teaching his little brother to throw a slider (which he now has all eternity to practice).  Then Charlie grows a beard, er, meets a lady.  He wants to go on a round-the-world sailing trip with her (which is what all Hollywood-attractive 20-year-olds like to do, in my experience), but then his ghost brother gets scared, sayin “If you move in with that girly I’ll disappear into thin air.”

So then Charlie stays at the cemetery with his dead brother while his girlfriend embarks on a dangerous sailing trip (against the advice of Ray Liotta).  Gee, I wonder if anything bad will happen to her.  I guess you’ll just have to find out.

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Awwww yeeeeah, this banner picture is for you, ladies.  I know how much you love pictures of hot, shirtless dudes playing sports.  Anyway, the story is that Zac Efron will soon be playing a street tough, a role he was born to play.

The “High School Musical” graduate is attached to star in and produce a remake of “Snabba Cash,” a hot Swedish thriller [trailer after the jump] that was the subject of a heavy Hollywood bidding war before ending up at Warner Bros.

“Snabba,” based on a novel by Jens Lapidus, was a major hit in its home country this year. The film follows three interconnected storylines involving drugs and organized crime, with the main character a young man (played in the original by Joel Kinnaman) who hopes to strike it rich quickly by becoming a runner for a coke dealer. Efron would play the runner in the WB version. [Yahoo/THR]

I’m sure you’re all expecting me to make some crude, gay joke here.  Something like, “Zac Efron would probably make a great drug smuggler, he’s already used to picking condoms out of his sh*t.”  But I’m taking the high road.  That kind of toilet humor is beneath me.  Instead I’ll just say that Zac Efron would make a fine drug smuggler.  He could hide them in his purse.

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