Super 8’s Joel Courtney will be Tom Sawyer

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I liked SUPER 8 for many reasons, but chief among them was the excellent performances from the child actors involved. It can normally be tough to round up one convincing kid, much less a group of them for a movie, and Abrams did a great job finding the cast he did.

Joel Courtney is perhaps the film’s greatest success story, going from complete unknown to headline a blockbuster. Now his performance in SUPER 8 has landed him another leading role, that of a literary legend, Tom Sawyer.

The movie is being written and directed by Jo Kastner, and starts shooting in August in…Bulgaria? I guess they could make that look like the 19th century American south? The last time I saw Tom Sawyer, he was being played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas opposite Brad Renfro as Huck Finn. TOM AND HUCK might seem awful now, but it kicked ass when I was a kid!.

After Sawyer, Courtney is up for the lead in THE HEALER, where a bitter son tries to reunite with his father, but supernatural events cause him to be trapped in between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Think this kid has a future?