Zac Efron to the rescue! Paramount’s upcoming Baywatch movie may have found another sexy star to hit the beach alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson next year. According to reports from outlets including The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, Efron, 27, is in negotiations to play a lifeguard in the film, which is based on the 1990s series of the same name.
Per THR, the We Are Your Friends actor would play a “young rule-flouting hothead” who teams up with Johnson’s character — a “by-the-book and very serious lifeguard” — to save the beach from a greedy oil tycoon. Seth Gordon, who did the first Horrible Bosses flick in 2011, has been tapped to direct.
Rumors about a big-screen Baywatch adaptation have been circulating for years. Johnson, 43, finally confirmed them last October, when he shared a photo of himself shirtless and sitting atop a jet ski.
“‘This is my beach bitch!’ Rumors are true…we’re making #BAYWATCH the movie,” he captioned the pic. “Edgy, raunchy, and hopefully, funny as all hell. Cue slo mo running on the beach… #WhoNeedsMouthToMouth #RedShortsBeHugginABrotha.”
The “slo mo running” crack, of course, is a reference to the show’s trademark action sequences, which featured the series’ sexy stars sprinting along the beach in their iconic red swimsuits. (Baywatch, which ran from 1989 to 2001, starred David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, David Chokachi, David Charvet, and Gena Lee Nolin, among others.)
“That came about organically because we had no money,” Hasselhoff told Men’s Health of the slo-mo sequences back in 2012. “We didn’t have enough financing to finish the show. So we found a way to fill the hour by shooting people in slow motion. We said, ‘Well, girls in bathing suits look good running in slow motion, let’s just shoot that.’ And we found out that the audience kinda liked it.”
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