For about a year, rumors have been running rampant that High School Musical leads Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens have been dating. There has been no official word about them… until now!

Vanessa’s reps confirm to AOL Music that her music video for “Say Ok” (in which Zac also stars) was not just good eye candy, but also served as the duo’s “coming out” as a couple.

This should bring plenty of buzz to High School Musical 2, premiering on August 17 on The Disney Channel!

Zac Efron made the cut for People’s 100 Most Beautiful People. High School Musical co-star and and rumored girlfriend Vanessa Hudgens is one lucky gal!

Here’s the blurb from the People issue…

As the jock-with-an- artsy-side in High School Musical (and the sequel, out in August), Efron aces the swoon test.

HIS AWKWARD PAST “I was always the shortest kid in school. A really short, really skinny kid. Finally, I got bigger in my junior year [he’s 5′6″]. Plus, I had a juge gap in my teeth. I got teased more about my gap than anything else.”

BEST FEATURE NOW “Older women appreciate my eyes.”

I’m sure younger women appreciate them too…

High School Musical stars Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale attend Hollywood Life Magazine’s 9th Annual Young Hollywood Awards at the Music Box at the Fonda on Sunday night in Los Angeles, Calif.

In their July 2007 issue, Popstar Magazine will be confirming that Zac and Vanessa have been dating dating off and on (mostly on) since High School Musical 1.

We never confirmed it only because they never confirmed it publicly, even though it’s been an open secret to everyone around them and to everyone in the entertainment biz. Even their fans are aware of it—75% of you voted on our site at popstaronline.com that you thought they were dating.

Popstar! was the first mag to promote “Zanessa” and we always did so respectfully—never revealing private details that we have access to, or using sneaky photos (that are out there) proving they’re seeing each other. We also didn’t want to use other stars’ interviews to “leak” the info because that would be silly since we already knew the truth.

After seeing Zac and Vanessa in the “Say OK” video, that kind of made it hard to pretend they were not an item! It was like when Justin & Britney and J.Lo & Marc Anthony were dating but wouldn’t say it…at first, you go along with it. But enough’s enough once everyone knows.

Still, we’ll be treating them with a lot of respect and won’t publish any deeply private things about them. So far, we have had no complaints from the cutest couple ever. We love them as individuals and as a real-life couple. Don’t you?

25+ pictures inside of Zac, Vanessa and Ashley…

Pictured with High School Musical co-star Vanessa Anne Hudgens, Heroes‘ Hayden Panettiere, and American Idol judge Paula Abdul

It was a full house with the cast of Hairspray was on hand at ShoWest on Wednesday night — John Travolta, Nicole Blonsky, Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Brittany Snow, James Marsden, Elijah Kelley, Allison Janney, and Christopher Walken.

SOOOOOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hairspray hits theaters on Friday, July 20. For Hairspray movie stills, CLICK HERE.

Go, Speed Racer! Go!

High School Musical’s Zac Efron is in talks to star in the lead role of The Wachowski brothers’ (V For Vendetta, The Matrix trilogy) adaptation of Speed Racer, the live-action adaptation of the Japanese cartoon series.

Zac, 19, was even granted permission by Disney to leave the High School Musical 2 set for a day so that he could attend the Speed Racher callback audition. If Warner Bros. is smart, they still snag him!

Speed Racer is scheduled for a May 23, 2008 release.

Zac already has a feature film Hairspray with John Travolta set to drop July 20.

The New York Times featured a fantastic article about the upcoming High School Musical 2: Sing It All or Nothing!. I almost peed in my pants while reading it from all the excitement.

Here are 5 things I learned about High School Musical 2 and its cast:

• Dance number “I Don’t Dance” pits Ryan and Chad’s teams against one another. It sets a baseball game to a musical score that fuses elements of hip-hop and swing.
• There’s a new song called “Fabulous” has Sharpay and Ryan float around in lounge chairs in a pool and “pass around beach balls in a Busby Berkeley-like sequence.”
• Zac wasn’t featured much on the High School Musical soundtrack because his “deep baritone had been deemed an uneasy fit with the rest of the cast” but he’ll be singing own stuff in the new movie and in Hairspray.
• Lucas Grabeel’s younger sister, Autumn Grabeel, is Monique Coleman’s personal assistant
• And here’s a little synopsis of High School Musical 2: “Sharpay Evans, the rich girl whom audiences loved to hate in the original movie, is on a campaign to woo Troy, the basketball coach’s son, away from Gabriella. The setting is a luxurious country club owned by Sharpay’s father, where Troy, Gabriella and their East High classmates have all landed summer jobs. Instead of a school musical, the source of conflict (and more than a few songs) is the club’s annual talent show, and Sharpay is scheming to get Troy to perform a duet.”

And one Zac Efron quote had a little OUCH factor, which stuck out to me: “Personally, I feel no competition with the cast because I’m not going for the same things they are. A lot of them are doing teen music things, and tours, various TV deals and other Disney TV movies and Disney albums. That’s the last thing I want to be doing at the moment. I’m setting my sights a little bit higher.”

High School Musical 2 is set for an August 17 release.

Pictured: Zac Efron is Troy Bolton, Vanessa Anne Hudgens is Gabriella Montez, Ashley Tisdale is Sharpay Evans, Lucas Grabeel is Ryan Events, Corbin Bleu is Chad Danforth, and Monique Coleman is Taylor McKessie.