“I was looking for a new challenge, and this was another musical,” he tells Us

Zac Efron says he dropped out of the Footloose remake because he wants to “grow a bit.”

“I want to grow a bit with the types of movies I want to make,” says Efron — who rose to fame with High School Musical. His next flick, 17 Again, opens April 17.

Footloose, he says, “sort of” wasn’t a good fit.

“It was more along the lines that I was looking for a new challenge, and this was another musical,” he says. It’s been rumored Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford could replace him.

Efron insists he’s “not…done with musicals in any way.

“I look forward to being in them when possible,” he says. “I want to try different things.”

Ideally, he’d like to do “everything” — comedy, drama, action.

“I’m still figuring it out truthfully…I don’t know,” he says. “It’s more about learning for me right now and trying as many things as possible.”

Efron says “it’s hard” to pick one person’s career to emulate, but ideally he’d like to follow in the footsteps of “anyone who has tried new things and isn’t afraid to take risks. People that work hard. Leo [DiCaprio], Johnny [Depp], Michael J. Fox.”

The actor says filming 17 Again made him “hungry for more.

“It was a blast. It really turned things around for me,” he says. “It was exciting, educational.”

He’s currently focusing on drama The Death & Life of Charlie St. Cloud, in which he plays a cemetery caretaker who has weekly meetings with his dead siblings. He also falls in love with a young woman who may have died in a sailing accident.

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