The name's Bond.... er,
Fredrik Bond. Best known for sharing the same surname as 007 and also for being the guy that at one time was attached to direct both the comic book Hack/Slash and a Hollywood remake of Bong Joon-ho's The Host (and a bunch of other stuff, including sci-fi movie Year 12) - the commercials helmer looks set to finally get around to making his feature directorial debut this year.
Variety say Bond has been hired to direct
Zac Efron's new movie, an action comedy romancer that was formerly titled
The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman (no replacement moniker yet) and that probably had a title change when Mandate remembered Efron was just in The Life and Death of Charlie St. Cloud, which has at least four words the same! Rather ambitiously
Matt Drake's script is promoted as being 'in the spirit of Pulp Fiction' and it will find Efron as a young man who travels to Eastern Europe to get away from things when his mother dies. He falls in love with a girl but it's never that easy is it... and it turns out she has ties to a violent crime boss. Yup, we've all been there... Drake's script has been floating around Hollywood since it hit the blacklist in 2007 and since then he's also written the low budget, mysterious, R-rated Todd Phillips and Joel Silver comedy Project X that opens in November. Shia LaBeouf was previously attached to star in an adaptation of the screenplay and with Efron not being able to play to the Disney/High School Musical crowd forever, clearly following in LaBeouf's action career footsteps is a smart move for him. This movie should be a good test to see if he will actually have a career in five years time.