Post-Bubblegum

Shaun Cassidy, now 29, continues to leave his teenybop idol image behind--he’s turning producer, with a deal to star in and produce TV movies for Warner Bros.

The ex-heartthrob singer is keeping busy as an actor: After five years of stage work and a recent three-month stint on “General Hospital,” he’ll appear in “Once Upon a Texas Train,” a CBS movie set to air Jan. 3, playing Cotton, an outlaw who kidnaps another outlaw, played by Willie Nelson. It also stars Angie Dickinson and Richard Widmark.

The producing deal has Cassidy developing “Secrets of the White Rose,” a docudrama based on the 1986 book “Shattering the German Night” by Jud Newborn and Annette Eberly Dumbach. It deals with a student uprising in Nazi Germany in World War II, and includes a “true Cain and Abel story” about two close friends, says Warner Bros. TV veep Jane Rosenthal. Cassidy will star as a resistance fighter. Peter S. Greenberg exec produces.

The other project: “The Fugitive Heart,” “a survival love story” based on an idea by Cassidy. He co-scripts with Linda Cowgill.

Cassidy’s scouting other properties, but insists acting is still his main focus, not producing: “I haven’t switched careers, I’ve just expanded my horizons.”

And what about his pop music career? He doesn’t rule out making another recording. For now, he says, “I sing around the shower.”