A new trailer for The Lucky One has been released this week. Starring heart-throb Zac Efron, it’s sure to get the girls swooning over his war hero character.

Adapted from the 2008 bestselling novel of the same name, written by Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One follows US Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault (Efron) who, whilst fighting in Iraq, finds a photograph a woman whom he credits for keeping him alive, believing she was a good luck charm during his time in the war. When he returns home, he travels to North Carolina in search for the unknown woman, where he shows up at her door and ends up taking a job at her family-run kennel. Keeping the photograph a secret, Logan learns that the woman’s name is Beth, played by Taylor Schilling, and a romance begins to blossom. Logan begins to believe that the photograph was more than just a good luck charm, it was fate, but has the secret already been kept from Beth for too long?

Producer Denise Di Novi has already brought three of Sparks novels to the cinema with Nights in Rodanthe, A Walk to Remember and Message in a Bottle, so it’s safe to presume that The Lucky One will be a heavily emotionally yet stunning adaptation like the others.

The film also comes from the author of The Notebook, another highly acclaimed romantic novel and film adaptation. But whilst he’s no Ryan Gosling, Efron is a great choice for this film, especially after his role in the adaptation of Ben Sherwood’s best-selling romantic novel, The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, in 2010. After seeing his performance in this film, a much more mature actor from his High School Musical days, I’m already looking forward to this adaptation, and I’m not going to be the only one after seeing the sensuous trailer below.

Directed by Scott Hicks, the film also stars Blythe Danner and Jay R. Ferguson, and is set to be released on 4th May, 2012. This is definitely one for the girls, but the men should also be happy that the film misses a Valentine’s Day release, so it’s likely that you won’t have to be dragged along to it too.

Nicholas Sparks’ novels have had without a doubt had tremendous success both in terms of book sales and the box office takings of their film adaptations. His latest novel to be turned into a film is The Lucky One, published back in 2008, and it certainly looks like it is set to continue what is a brilliant trend for the novelist, whose film adaptations to date include Message in a Bottle, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John, and of course, the incredibly popular The Notebook, which gave a huge boost to the careers of its leading stars, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.

Yahoo Movies have now got a brilliant first look at the film with a poster and a great featurette in which Sparks talks about the story of the film along with some its leading cast, which includes Zac Efron (17 Again), relative newcomer Taylor Schilling (Ben Affleck’s upcoming Argo), Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents), and Jay R. Ferguson (The Killer Inside Me).

Taken from Waterstones’ description of the novel,

“Is there really such a thing as a good luck charm? Ex-soldier Logan Thibault thinks he just might have found one. Haunted by memories of the friends he lost in Iraq, Logan knows how fortunate he is to be home. He believes that a photograph he carried with him, a picture of a smiling woman he’s never met, kept him safe. Even though he knows nothing about this woman, he hopes she might hold the key to his destiny. Resolving to find her, Logan embarks on a journey of startling discovery. Beth, the woman whose picture he holds, is struggling with problems of her own: her volatile ex-husband won’t accept their relationship is over and threatens anyone who gets too close to her. And, despite a growing attraction between them, Logan has kept one explosive secret from Beth: how he came across her photograph in the first place…”

The featurette gives us our first look at clips from the film spliced between the interviews with Sparks and the cast, and it looks brilliant. Say what you will about Efron’s early rise to fame through High School Musical, I think he’s becoming a terrific young actor, and just like Kristen Stewart is shaking off her Twilight stereotype and taking more diverse and unexpected parts, Efron looks to be going for roles to demonstrate what a great actor he is, and this looks to be a terrific demonstration of that.

The music of the video also happens to be excellent, closing with One Republic’s great single, Secrets, with its wonderfully feel-good/inspirational chorus. Despite Schilling being relatively new to the industry, she looks brilliant in this opposite Efron, and I really can’t wait for this to hit the big screen.

Directed by twice Oscar-nominated director Scott Hicks (Shine), and with a script from Will Fetters (Remember Me), The Lucky One is due to be released here in the UK on 4^th May next year, and I think they can definitely already count on my ticket money, along with many, many others’. Without further ado, here’s the excellent featurette, followed by the film’s first poster.

The Lucky One, the latest Nicholas Sparks penned tear-jerker to get the big-screen treatment, has finally cast its leading lady. With Zac will-he-just-sit-down-and-film-Jonny-Quest Efron (Charlie St. Cloud) already cast as a US marine named Logan, Mercy star Taylor Schilling (Atlas Shrugged) has signed on to play his…well, it’s complicated.

The story opens with Efron’s Marine serving his third tour of duty in Iraq. After finding a half buried photo of a young woman (Schilling) in the sand he soon begins attributing his luck to the enigmatic snap. Tracking down the woman in question when he returns home to Colerado, a passionate romance erupts. Caught of guard by the attraction he feels, Logan resolves to keep the photo and its attributed luck a secret, a choice that – according to wikipedia – threatens to tear them apart.

Sold to Warner Bros., the adaptation will be directed by Douglas McGrath for a 2012 release.

THR had it first.

News coming out of The Hollywood Reporter has Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum teaming up to star in Michael ‘Grey Gardens’ Sucsy’s The Vow. Production of the Spyglass financed project is set to commence at the end of August in Chicago an Toronto, under the stewardship of producers Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Jonathan Glickman and Paul Taublieb. 

The romantic drama tells the real-life story of Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, a New Mexico couple whose live were thrown into chaos by a car-crash in 1993 just two months after their wedding,which left the newly-wed bride in a coma. Duty- and love-bound, her husband remains by her side devoted, until she wakes to find that she has no memory of their relationship. He then sets about wooing her in an attempt to win her heart once more. Sounds vaguely familiar, with plot elements reminiscent of amnesiac rom-coms While You Were Sleeping, Overboard and Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates, although chances are the drama will be a far more grown up affair than any of them.

The book which tells the Carpenters’ story offers a tagline in its blurb that I’m sure will feature somewhere in the pre-release marketing:

The Vow is a testament to the power and perservance of love. The tender story that has touched millions of people now is told by the two who lived it. Their life together has not been defined by a car wreck but by a vow they made.

If the project sounds even more familiar, it is perhapsbecause it has been in production for ten years already, and was once planned as a Julia Roberts vehicle. Several rewrites later, at the hands of, among others, the writing team of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, Michael Seitzman, Jason Katims and Hanna Weg, and Spyglass obviously still believe that The Vow has box-office potential, though it will be subject to another rewrite, this time by the director himself.

Both actors will seemingly continue their chameleon-like genre hopping for roles, with Tatum in particular proving his versatility with a CV that includes projects as diverse as G.I. Joe, Dear John, The Fighter and now The Vow. But, even despite that tendency to defy type-casting, the project is actually a fairly natural step for the pair, since both have starred in successful adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels- The Notebook for McAdams and recently Dear John for Tatum, and the plot definitely bears passing resemblance to his particular brand of weepy romance. 

Sounds like a sure-fire hit to me, especially in the same circles that made the two Sparks adaptations so box-office friendly.

Just got home from the preview screening of The Last Song (directed by Julie Anne Robinson) and I thought I’d share a clip with you that Disney just sent over.

The Last Song is Miley Cyrus’ new movie about a teenage girl called Ronnie (Cyrus) who, with her brother (Bobby Coleman), is shipped off to live with their father (Greg Kinnear) for a summer vacation. Things haven’t been going too well at home and her mother (Kelly Preston) decides a summer vacation in the sun, sea and sand of Georgia will do her some good… especially when she meets Will (Liam Hemsworth).

The last song is based on the book by Nicholas Sparks so immediately, you know it’ll be a tear jerker!

The Last Song is released 30th April and stay tuned for some exclusive interviews in the coming weeks.

We’ve just been sent this brand new trailer for Dear John which stars Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried and is based on a Nicholas Sparks book (who also wrote The Notebook). It’s directed by Lasse Hallström and is released 14th April.

Synopsis: It’s love at first sight for John (Tatum) and college student Savannah (Mamma Mia’s Amanda Seyfried) when they meet by chance on the beach during a summer holiday. But their romance is threatened as the holiday ends, Savannah has to go back to college and John must return to life in the army and all that his duty entails. Brought together by love, will fate tear them apart?

Late last year we posted the trailer for Miley Cyrus’ latest movie, The Last Song and today we’ve received a couple of new posters which you can click below to enlarge.

The movie also stars Greg Kinnear, Bobby Coleman, Liam Hemsworth and is directed by Julie Anne Robinson. The Last Song is based on the book of the same name by author, Nicholas Sparks who has previously written A Walk to Remember and The Notebook. My wife loves The Notebook and the one time I saw it, I have to admit i did shed a tear!

Synopsis: Based on best-selling novelist NICHOLAS SPARKS’ (“A Walk to Remember,” “The Notebook”) latest novel, “The Last Song” is set in a small Southern beach town where an estranged father (GREG KINNEAR) gets a chance to spend the summer with his reluctant teenage daughter (MILEY CYRUS), who’d rather be home in New York. He tries to reconnect with her through the only thing they have in common—music—in a story of family, friendship, secrets and salvation, along with first loves and second chances.

The Last Song is released April 30th and if you’ve not already, check out the trailer we’ve posted here.