Zac Efron Joins Dwayne Johnson in BAYWATCH Movie

This should help get the ladies into the theater. THR reports that Paramount is in negotiations with Zac Efron to star alongside Dwayne Johnson in the studio's film adaptation of the 1990s TV series Baywatch. Director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) just boarded the project a couple of weeks ago, and after spending over a decade in development, the movie seems to be gaining steam very quickly now.

In the film, Johnson is playing "a by-the-book and very serious lifeguard who is forced to team up with a young rule-flouting hothead (Efron) in order to save their beach from environmental destruction at the hands of an oil tycoon."

Like most guys my age, I immediately wrote off Efron as another Disney star incapable of more than the song and dance cheeriness of the High School Musical movies, but the actor has proven me wrong, growing out of that role in the past few years and shown his comedic chops in movies like Neighbors and Liberal Arts. He's no longer someone who causes me to roll my eyes when I hear he's starring in a movie, and seeing him team up with Johnson (one of my favorite working actors right now) seems like it could be fun, even in a film as ridiculous as Baywatch.

Production is supposed to begin early next year, so we can probably expect this movie sometime in 2017. In the meantime, Efron can be seen in We Are Your Friends beginning on August 28th.