Shia LaBeouf Associating With John Grisham

Shia fans will have more than just the upcoming Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen to look forward to. Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures has purchased the rights to John Grisham's new legal thriller, The Associate, and has tapped LaBeouf to star in the film. He will play a graduating law student who runs into trouble when he's manipulated into a job at a prestigious law firm handling a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. The book comes out in January.

This will be a nice chance to see LaBeouf in something other than a blockbuster. All gossip page chatter aside, I think he's actually quite a talented actor with a lot of room to grow (and possessing the unlikeliest leading man name). Hopefully this film finds him something meatier to chomp into than, say, explosions and giant robots (though I do enjoy explosions and giant robots).