Shia LaBeouf Is Gonna Pretend to Be Tall

Considering the start he's had in professional acting, it's difficult to see how Shia LaBeouf can go on to a serious career. A lot of this has to do with whom you start. Robert DeNiro got to start with Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma; Shia LaBeouf had Michael Bay. That'll change a man. In the last four years of his career, LaBeouf has done three "Transformers" movies, a "Wall Street" sequel he ruined, an "Indiana Jones" sequel he ruined and something called "Eagle Eye." It's probably time for a change.

Thus, he's going indie! (Also, he's getting in fights.) There's John Hillcoat's Depression drama "The Wettest County in the World" (with Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain) and "The Company You Keep," a Robert Redford (yawn) drama currently filming in Vancouver. But his next project is a full-blown "weird" one: He's going to play a person who is 20 feet tall.

We'll just let Variety explain it: "The story centers on a troubled girl who encounters a 20-foot-tall next-door-neighbor (LaBeouf)." You know, that didn't explain anything. It is a "smaller" role for LaBeouf, but honestly, we haven't seen this guy do much other than preen, get in trouble and stick his foot in his mouth for four years now. We'll believe he's ready to Capital A Act when we see it. But don't blame him. It'd happen to any of us with Michael Bay as our only reference point.

LaBeouf gets large in quirky love story from Linde and Henson [Variety]