From Celebrities:

That sound you just heard was the entire Internet saying in unison, “Good job, Joel Courtney!” The adorable Super 8 star has just been cast as Tom Sawyer in Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. Per Variety, the Jo Kastner-directed adaptation will shoot in Bulgaria instead of Missouri, which is… odd. Otherwise, mint! Courtney is also in talks for the supernatural thriller The Healer. Spooky, scary, etc.

From the Associated Press:

Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), the adolescent protagonist, is the exception, the sensitive kid who realizes that amid all of this gadgetry and mechanization, sometimes just being human — being genuinely nice — is the answer. He is America unplugged, and if "Super 8" is any indication, Abrams believes that there's still great value to that, even today: A fan boy doesn't need gadgets to prevail.

That probably should have been obvious from the first moment of "Super 8," when the logo of Abrams' production company appears. Remember it? "Bad Robot."

From PopEater:

'Super 8' Director J.J. Abrams lays out a tale so clearly inspired by '70s/'80s Steven Spielberg, the legend himself agreed to produce it. A mysterious monster attacks a sleepy Ohio town, and against all odds, some middle-school movie geeks uncover the truth and save their neighbors, and their planet. But the heart of 'Super 8' isn't its spectacular effects. It's the kids in the cast (including exceptional newcomer Joel Courtney as Joe Lamb) who truly bring the film to life. We haven't seen an ensemble of child actors this good since 'Stand by Me,' and that's some serious praise.

Here's some Super 8 cartoon art by Howard M. Shum.

While watching "Super 8," I couldn't help but notice that all the main kids had distinct head shapes. I wonder if that played a part in J.J. Abrams casting them? Of course I had to make them into cartoons. Here are Zach Mills, Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Ryan Lee, Riley Griffiths, and Gabriel Basso.

From Cinema Blend:

After stunning nearly everyone who saw Super 8 with his naturalistic and immediately winning performance, 15-year-old Joel Courtney moved on to play one of American literature's most iconic characters, signing on to star in a new movie adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, this one called Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. And though Courtney's inexperienced naturalism-- he'd never been in a film before this summer-- was one of the selling points of his performance in Super 8, he'll be joined in the new film by a veteran of the trade.

Variety reports that Jake T. Austin, star of Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place, has signed on to play Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's best friend and, you may remember, an iconic literary character all his own. At 15 and 16 Austin and Courtney are both a little older than Tom and Huck are as described in Twain's book, but both look convincingly young enough to get the boyhood themes across well enough. Shooting starts this summer in Bulgaria, and it's unclear if the title change is just to emphasize the friendship between the two boys or that the story will be tweaked from Twain's original book.

Both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been portrayed onscreen dozens of times, with seemingly every generation getting their own take on the characters. Having been 11 in 1995, I've got some vague but fond memories of Tom and Huck, which starred tween heartthrobs of their day Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Brad Renfro. Congratulations, Joel Courtney-- you've gone from unknown to a modern-day JTT in just a few short months.

Here's an unused poster from "Super 8".