Jonny Quest gets Zac Efron – but won’t be called Jonny Quest – huh?

Zac Efron I’ve written before about my fondness for “Jonny Quest,” both the classic animated series and the revival script by Dan Mazeau that has been stirring much interest in Hollywood. Now it looks like the rumors are true and that the plum role is going to Zac Efron, the 21-year-old pretty-boy star who is hoping the action role will help him dance away from youth-pop vehicles and whip up a career-redefining franchise in the Indiana Jones mode. (Dwayne Johnson is circling the project as well and would be the brawny version of pilot and man-of-action Race Bannon.) The choice of Efron is going to stir up fans of the classic Quest series because, well, Jonny was just an 11-year-old in the prime-time cartoons of the 1960s that so deftly pulled on Milton Canniff, Ian Fleming and Rudyard Kipling for their spirit of exotic adventure. I myself think it’s a surprising but interesting choice, and I’m one of the people in town who think Efron (like Justin Timberlake) has a big future ahead of him and that people will look back on his frothy Disney duty as just the early steps in the choreography of his career. Making Jonny older will change the property, to be sure, but maybe it will make it richer as well. – From LA Times