Cruise Jr follows dad into the family business

Adopted son to take leading role in remake of 'most violent film of all time'

(GETTY)

His parents are Hollywood royalty who boast an Oscar and four Golden Globes between them and who are considered to be among the most beautiful people on celluloid.

Now, it would appear that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's son has stepped out from under their considerable shadows to consolidate his own burgeoning acting career in Hollywood.

Connor Cruise, who was adopted by Cruise and Kidman in February 1995 along with his sister, Isabella, may only be 14 years old but he is set to take on his second starring film role in a remake of the 1984 action war drama, Red Dawn, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The original 1984 film, which featured a fictional onset of World War Three after America is invaded by the Soviet Union and their Central American allies, helped to propel its then little known leads, Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, to worldwide fame. At the time of its release, it garnered controversy for its brutality; it was named as the most violent film by the Guinness Book of Records, with a rate of 134 acts of violence per hour. It is not known if this remake will follow along the same lines but it is expected to launch the career of the youngest member of the Cruise acting dynasty, in the same was as Swayze's was launched over three decades ago.

The film follows a group of American high school students who call themselves the Wolverines, after their local football team, who resist their evil foreign occupiers. Cruise Junior is set to play Daryl, the youngest in this group.

He will join cast members Chris Hemsworth, who has acted in the Australian soap, Home and Away, as the group's leader, Jed Eckert, originally played by Swayze, as well as Isabel Lucas, who starred in the box office hit, Transformers 2, who is playing a cheerleader rescued from an internment camp.

The cast are reportedly leaving for military training in preparation for the film at an undisclosed location, in a few weeks time.

Unlike the original film, which was released towards the end of the Cold War, this latest remake will see the group of teenagers invaded by Chinese and Russian troops.

Filming is due to begin in Detroit next month (sept) and is scheduled to be released in September 2010. Dan Bradley, who has worked on such cinematic blockbusters as Independence Day, The Bourne Supremacy and Quantum of Solace, is directing the film. Tony Gilroy, who is a seasoned screenwriter of such action films as State of Play and the ‘Bourne' trilogy, starring Matt Damon, is reportedly rewriting the script.

Cruise Junior, who is of African American heritage, made his big screen debut last year as the young Will Smith character in the drama, Seven Pounds. The film opened just six days before his father's World War Two premiere, Valkyrie, which was released on Christmas Day.

Cruise, aged 46, has starred in some of the highest earning if not critically acclaimed films to emerge from Hollywood in modern times including Mission Impossible, Top Gun, Rain Man and The Colour of Money.

In a recent interview, he said Cruise Junior had grown up with acting but that as a father, he had been careful not to put any pressure on his to follow his career path. "Who knows what he's going to do?" he said. Driving him to the audition for his first film role was "a great father-son moment", he added.