UPDATE, 10/18 8AM: Hudgens’ rep told Access Hollywood that her client still has a job; Disney says they’re “still negotiating” with the entire HSM cast.

Because this is a blog generally devoted to movies, and not to the naked exploits of barely-legal, barely-famous starlets, we’ve stayed out of Vanessa Hudgens topless photo non-scandal. But OK! is running a story that I just can’t not comment on, because if nothing else, it seems like a soon-to-be classic example of what old media companies are doing wrong when it comes to the web.

A bit of background for the uninitiated: Hudgens starred in two High School Musical movies for the Disney Channel, along fellow tween heartthrobs Ashley Tisdale and (Hudgens’ real-life boyfriend) Zac Efron. Both movies were such enormous successes on cable, iTunes and DVD that Disney decided to bring the entire cast back for a third film, this time aimed at a theatrical release. Then, in September, relatively tame images of a naked Hudgens, allegedly meant for a boyfriend’s eyes only, were leaked to the internet. Now, OK! is reporting that, over a month after issuing what seemed like a non-judgmental statement in regards to Hudgens’ internet nakedness, “Disney has made up its mind about what to do next and that the 18-year-old actress will not be asked to board the boat for the third HSM film.”

If this is true, then I think Disney is making a big mistake, for three reasons. Details after the jump.

Three reasons why firing Vanessa Hudgens would be a bad move:

1) OK!’s source claims that Disney thinks it can replace Hudgens with another Disney Channel star, possibly Sabrina Bryan, who starred in two movies about the manufactured teen girl group The Cheetah Girls, and who is also performing this season (and apparently, kicking ass) on Dancing With the Stars. Says the source: “The producers think that after Dancing With the Stars, Sabrina will be more famous than Vanessa.”

I beg to differ. If kids and teens are watching Dancing with the Stars at all (my guess is that it’s a much bigger hit with the nursing home demo), they’re doing it with their parents. That makes High School Musical de facto cooler, because it’s something their parents don’t get/don’t have much or any interest in. Sabrina no doubt has her own cred with this age group, but I seriously doubt her involvement with Dancing is going to increase that. This is like saying teenage girls in 1985 would have liked Michael J. Fox better if he had guest starred on Murder She Wrote.

2) Kids spend more time online than they do watching television, especially older kids. Let’s assuming the cutoff point for the natural HSM demographic is 16––ie: anyone older than that dismisses it because they think it’s for “kids”. If that’s the case, then online interest in Hudgens’ amatuer pictorial has a fair shot of enticing an audience of older teens (particularly older male teens, who probably otherwise wouldn’t be caught dead at a musical) to leave the command center for a few hours and actually go to a theater.

3) Another nugget from OK!’s source: “They feel that as long as Zac Efron is in the movie, all will be fine. He’s the real star — the household name — and, most importantly, he comes without baggage.” Um, no and no. The basic concept of star theory would hold that the perception of Hudgens’ real life relationship with Efron feeds into the on screen relationship, and vice versa. In other words, part of the pleasure that fans get from watching HSM comes from the fact that they know Zac and Vanessa are together in real life, and they follow their relationship off screen because in some way, even if its subsconcious, it feel like an extension of the movies.

So on the one hand, you could say that Efron needs to be paired on screen with Hudgens in order for his presence to be worth anything at all. On the other hand, if Hudgens’ nakedness gives her such a stigma (and clearly I don’t think it does, but let’s play along), then wouldn’t Efron’s known off-screen association with this dirty boob-shower qualify as “baggage”? Either way, it’s way too late in the life of the franchise to separate these two.

Don’t believe me? Start typing “Zac Efron” in the Google search window at the top of your Firefox browser. If you finish spelling his name and hit the space bar, Google will assume you meant “zac efron and vanessa hudgens.” If Google can’t conceive of the two apart, imagine how twelve year old girls are gonna take the news.