Thomas Horn, in my humble opinion, gave one of the finest performances of 2011 in Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I understand I’m in the minority in appreciating Horn’s turn. But his performance as an emotionally-stunted, inquisitive New York adolescent really moved me. Prior to acting Horn was best known as a Jeopardy! champion, so I didn’t know if his Extremely Loud character was just his personality or an actual performance. I was anxious to see what he did next, and now we’ll all be able to find out.
Deadline says Horn has signed on for two acting projects. First he'll will join the ensemble for Space Warriors, an adventure about teens who sign up for an exclusive NASA space camp and must join forces when something goes wrong on the space station. We had a movie like that when I was young. It was called SpaceCamp, and it starred Kate Capshaw, Lea Thompson and Kelly Preston. Beat that, Warriors.
After, Horn will move on to Joe’s Mountain, a Chuck Rose-directed drama that stars Kris Kristofferson as a one-time ladies’ man and a cancer survivor who’d like to try and cure an ailing child by bringing him to a magical lake. Horn, of course, plays the sick child.
We’ll have a much better idea of Horn’s acting range after seeing him in these two new projects. I’m guessing he has talent, but again, since Close was his first professional acting gig, we’ll have to wait just a bit longer to see if he’s the next Haley Joel Osment, or a one-hit wonder.
