"High School" star making feature debut on DVD

By Thomas K. Arnold

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Chalk one up for the burgeoning direct-to-video movement: MGM's next project, "Picture This," stars none other than Ashley Tisdale.

The star of Disney's "High School Musical" and "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" is making her feature-film debut in the coming-of-age comedy, which bows July 22 on DVD.

Tisdale plays an unpopular high school senior who gets a date to the biggest party of the year with the school's most sought-after guy, only to find herself grounded on the appointed date. So she enlists her friends and video phone to outsmart her dad -- as well as her date's ex-girlfriend.

"We were fortunate to get the Ashley movie," said Charlie Cohen, who spearheads MGM's DTV initiative. "Two factors contributed. First, our timing was good, and we were able to get her before she became big, and secondly, we had a script that she really liked, especially the relationship between the father and her character."

Tisdale, responding via e-mail, confirmed that the script attracted her to the project. "When I read the script for 'Picture This,' I just fell in love with the lead character, Mandy, this goofy, unpopular girl-next-door who knows what she wants but isn't willing to sacrifice who she is to get it," Tisdale said. "Mandy's real, and I think a lot of kids will relate to that. It reminds me a lot of when I was in high school. I wasn't really in the popular group, but I wasn't in the nerdy group. I was somewhere in the middle, too."

"Picture This," directed by Stephen Herek ("Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"), is the latest DTV feature from

MGM, which entered the direct-to-video business in January 2007, generally plies its catalog for films worthy of sequels, banking on awareness of the original theatrical feature to drive interest.

The primary audience for direct-to-video films, Cohen said, is "young men and women who are attracted to the movie because the title is familiar, or because the cast is appealing to them. We tend to cast television actors from popular series that have younger-skewing demographics. When we have an original title, like 'Picture This,' we look for a unique marketing and promotion aspect that will help make the title stand out."