This year’s Oscar-nominated James Franco (127 Hours) is all over the news lately for a number of reasons. He is set to co-host this year’s Academy Award, alongside Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises) he’s also developing William Faulkner’s celebrated novel As I Lay Dying for the big screen. For more on this project and what else Franco is up to, hit the jump!
Cinema Blend tells us that Franco is taking on both screenwriting and directorial duties for the adaptation of the American classic. Screen Rant reveals that he is currently assembling the movie’s cast, which is rumored to include some stellar male leads. Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), Richard Jenkins (Eat, Pray, Love), Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire), and the almost forgotten Joaquin Phoenix (Two Lovers) are among his favorites for his 160-page script.
Planned for a summer of 2011 shoot, here are Franco’s words, via Screen Rant, on why he’s so drawn to this story: “You can slip into the characters’ heads and give them their inner voice for a while, but it has to be more fluid because movies just work differently than books. Movies, in some ways because they deal in images, are more concrete. I want to be loyal to the book — my approach is to always be loyal in a lot of ways — but in order to be loyal I will have to change some things for the movie.”
The accomplished young actor has obviously put in a great deal of research into this project because the website tells us that he “rang in the New Year by doing an amateur-shoot of ‘As I Lay Dying’ with actors down in North Carolina- though none of those performers are apparently guaranteed to appear in the actual theatrical film.”
Film School Rejects adds that “the novel…is a bleak, slow moving story about a poor family in Mississippi trying to move their mother’s corpse, by wagon, through rough terrain. It is told through the voices of 15 different narrators.” Their speculation is that the story is “is pretty unfilmable.”
The second half of our article brings us to the biopic of adult film legend Linda Lovelace, set to star Kate Hudson (The Killer Inside Me). The Huffington Post tells us that Franco will play Chuck Traynor, “her one-time husband and production manager of the Lovelace porn classic, ‘Deep Throat.’” The picture was originally rumored for Lindsay Lohan (Machete) to star, but after her trials in rehab, the notion fell through. Franco’s Howl directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are linked to adapt the movie based on the Eric Danville book, The Complete Linda Lovelace.
Somewhere along the way, Franco is also linked to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as director for the “uber-brutal novel of the Old West,” according to Twitch Film. True Grit producer Scott Rudin has the rights to the story, but Franco wants to prove his commitment to the project so adamantly that he has “recently filmed a pitch scene, with actors Mark Pelligrino, Scott Glenn, Luke Perry, and [brother] Dave Franco.” The story is about, “‘The Kid,’ a nameless young man drifting though the Old West and running up against some of the era‘s legendary figures and events.” Also, the website details that Tommy Lee Jones and Ridley Scott have been names in connection to this material.
Aside from all the Oscar buzz, Franco recently appeared in forty-one episodes of the daytime soap General Hospital, had a cameo in the action comedy The Green Hornet, and is cast in and directing The Night Stalker. He recently completed the adventure comedy Your Highness with Natalie Portman, Danny McBride, and Zooey Deschanel. Also, he has wrapped Rise of the Apes, a prequel to the story behind the classic Planet of the Apes. He’s even taken some time away from the camera to pen a collection of short stories called Palo Alto Stories which was published in October for Scribner.
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