Is Zac Efron cursed? His character in The Iron Claw just might be. The upcoming A24 film stars Efron as Kevin Von Erich, a real-life champion wrestler from a family of ring-loving athletes—including father Fritz (played by Mindhunter’s Holt McCallany) and brothers Mike, David, and Kerry (Stanley Simons, Harris Dickinson, and Jeremy Allen White). 

Despite their professional success, a cloud seems to hang over the Von Erichs. “Mom tried to protect us with God. Pop tried to protect us with wrestling,” Kevin muses in the first trailer for the movie, embedded below. “He said if we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us. I believed him. We all did.”

The rad sounds of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” then introduce us to the rest of the Von Erichs, who live hard, flaunt their jacked bodies (mom Doris, played by Maura Tierney, chastises one of her sons for not wearing pants in the house), and—as indicated by a split-second shot of Efron and Lily James as Kevin’s wife, Pam, sitting tearily by the side of a grave—die young. White’s Kerry seems particularly pensive and vulnerable: The trailer shows him riding moodily on a motorcycle and screaming into the void. Clearly, fit, hot guys have problems too.

A quick google will reveal what actually happened to the various Von Erichs. White himself discussed the fate of his character in a 2022 GQ story, where the Emmy-nominated star of The Bear also revealed that he planned to put on 40 pounds of muscle to play the role. 

When he officially signed on for the movie, White added, Efron sent him a friendly note: “Get training, eat, keep doing what you’re doing, stay hard.” Evidently, Efron also followed his own advice. “Zac’s a maniac,” White told Esquire in May. “He’s so focused and knowledgeable on training, diet, all that. In terms of a physical transformation, I think he kind of blew us all out of the water. He looks really amazing in this thing.”

We’ll see the fruits of those labors when The Iron Claw—written and directed by Sean Durkin—hits theaters December 22.