By now Paramount Pictures has paid for Shia LaBeouf's vacation house, assortment of cars, and God knows what kind of expensive habits, given that they're responsible for Eagle Eye, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Disturbia. And now they're sending him to law school.

LaBeouf, all grown up, will star in the first adaptation of a John Grisham legal thriller in 6 years, The Associate, a book that will be published in January. Variety writes that LaBeouf will play a Yale Law graduate who lands a job at a giant firm, finds out too much information, and presumably spends a good amount of time running from the cops.

I'm not sure I buy LaBeouf as America's new great action hero, but he's better than most of the options we've got, sadly. So long as he leaves the chimps alone on the vines this time, this might not turn out so bad.