Back to 'Blue Lagoon': Rising Heartthrob Brenton Thwaites on Remaking an Erotic Camp Classic (Video)

Ready for Blue Lagoon, the 2012 version?

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Lifetime is hoping so as it readies the premiere of Blue Lagoon: The Awakening, with Australian actors Brenton Thwaites and Indiana Evans in the main roles.

Based on the 1980 film which introduced Brooke Shields to audiences (and Milla Jovovich more than 10 years later in the followup), the story takes a modern spin on the premise: two high schoolers find themselves stranded on a tropical island, are forced to rely on each other for survival and in term discover their true selves.

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As Thwaites -- who is preparing for his own potential star-making turn in Angelina Jolie's Maleficent -- reveals in The Hollywood Reporter Cover Lounge, his character in The Awakening is a bit of an outsider "and trying to find his niche in high school."

"I hadn't really heard of the films. They were shot like a hundred years ago," he says, adding that he only began familiarizing himself with the content until after he booked the gig. "Kids these days are watching Gossip Girl or Vampire Diaries, they're not watching Blue Lagoon."

Thwaites revealed that he watched the original with Shields and Christopher Atkins, who has a small role in The Awakening. As far as the Jovovich version was concerned, he wasn't so lucky.

"The [1991] remake, I watched parts of. I couldn't bring myself to watch the whole thing, unfortunately," he confesses.

"Our film is so different. The only similar thing with the films is the title Blue Lagoon and it's about these kids surviving in the jungle," says Thwaites, who was hesitant at first to jump into a franchise that explored sexuality. "Pretty much half the film was shot in L.A. to show the comparison between the jungle and the city. It's a lot different."

The toughest scenes to shoot? Easily, the moments in the lagoon. "If you zoom up, we're like [shivers]," Thwaites recalls, "although it was ADRed because we couldn't even talk properly. Our mouths were blue."

The ones that were most fun? The water stuff "in the ocean," "swimming with the turtles or frolicking on the beach."

Blue Lagoon: The Awakening premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.