So far, despite the massive success of Heroes, only a couple of members of its cast have dipped their toes into the murky waters of motion pictures – and Ali Larter (Resident Evil: Extinction) and Milo Ventimiglia (Pathology) already had movie careers on the go before the show. Zachary Quinto – the show’s bad guy, Sylar, is playing Spock in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, but otherwise it’s been pretty barren.
Yet, with the show on indefinite hiatus because of the Writers’ Strike, Hayden Panettiere – who, as indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet, has been for many the show’s true breakout star – has decided to make the move into talking pictures.
She already had an appearance in the Julia Roberts movie, Fireflies In The Garden, under her belt, but she’s in talks about her first lead role, in the Fox Atomic teen comedy, I Love You Beth Cooper, which is currently aiming for a Spring start.
And to show that she can play anything, the impossibly cute Panettiere will play… a cheerleader. This time, though, there’ll be no ‘save the cheerleader, save the world’ stuff – this is a teen rom-com in which Panettiere, as the eponymous Beth Cooper, embarks on a series of comical misadventures with a nerdy valedictorian after he declares his love for her.
Sounds like pretty standard stuff – pretty slight. Which is why we’re surprised that Chris Columbus is directing the movie – we thought that, after the likes of the first two Harry Potter movies, he would specialise in big-budget fare these days. But perhaps he’s trying to get back to his comedic roots, the days when he would direct fare like Adventures In Babysitting and write the likes of Gremlins. If he can rediscover that freewheeling, slightly anarchic edge that coloured his first few gigs, this might be interesting.