For some reason, there are probably a few people who don’t work at Paramount that care about a Footloose remake. The number of interested folks will probably grow now, as High School Musical star and budding gay icon Zac Efron has dropped out of the project.

EW passes on speculation that Efron was advised to bail to avoid being branded as a guy who can only do musicals. Wonder if it’s too late to avoid being branded as a shoe-filling pretty boy with no depth or redeeming qualities? If his career ends up remotely as good as Billy Zane’s has been in the past five deals, I’ll call it a win.

(Me and Orson Welles might turn things around for Efron; we’ll know about that later this year when it goes into release.)