Me and Orson Welles
News

Most young fans may be looking forward to seeing Zac Efron in High School Musical 3, but the actor is taking on a more dramatic role in. Me and Orson Welles. It premiere September 5 at the Toronto film fest.

''He's falling for this older woman,'' director Richard Linklater said of Efron's characters. ''She's taking him for a bit of a ride.''

The object of Efron's affection is Claire Danes. The actress portrats a production assistant, while Efron is an up-and-coming actor working on Welles' famous 1937 staging of Julius Caesar. Here the stars are together:

Fans of Zac Efron will be in for a shock when they see him in Me and Orson Welles.

Typically see wearing a basketball jersey and dancing around - as is the case in the High School Musical 3 photos we've uncovered - Efron is taken back to 1937 in this new film.

Here's a synopsis of Me and Orson Welles:

It's the story of a whirlwind week in 1937 New York City when young aspiring actor Richard Samuels (Efron) is thrown into the middle of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre Company on the eve of the opening of Welles’ historic staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

During this week, Richard will find romance with a worldly older woman (Sonja Jones, played by Claire Danes), become immersed in a creative experience few are afforded, and learn the downside of crossing the imperious, brilliant Welles (Christian McKay). Richard is about to grow up fast.”

The movie’s first complete screening will be at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 4–13. No release date has been set yet.

Zac Efron is expanding his movie resume.

He'll be starring in Seventeen, alongside Matthew Perry, and will also play a role in Me and Orson Welles, an adaptation of the period coming-of-age novel by Robert Kaplow.

Set in 1937, the story centers on a high school student (Efron) who, while strolling the streets of New York, comes across the yet-to-open Mercury Theatre and is noticed by its mercurial founder, Orson Welles.

The man lands a bit part in "Julius Caesar," the production that catapulted Welles to the top, and spends the next week learning about life and love.

Christian McKay will play Welles, while Ben Chaplin has been cast as English film and stage actor George Coulouris.