Milla Jovovich is joining the cast of James Franco’s new indie film Future World, playing a drug lord in a post-apocalyptic world that is plagued with heat, ravaged by disease and crippled by chronic war. Franco and Bruce Thierry Cheung are directing and Franco is also acting in the film, the story of which he created.
The project, written by Cheung, Jay Davis and Jeremy Cheung, follows a young boy of noble birth who embarks on a journey through the wasteland of this future world in order to find medicine for his dying mother. Armed with his faithful bodyguard and only a slim hope that this medicine actually exists, he must forge courageously on, facing danger and ultimately the Warlord of this world who has plans of his own as he takes control of a beautiful, life-like robot assassin.Singer-actor George Lewis Jr, known as Twin Shadow, has also been cast in the role of Ratcatcher.
| By admin • 0 comments • 23 | News |
| By admin • 0 comments • 23 | News |
How’s this for a powerhouse combination: Russell Crowe is in talks to star in a James Franco-directed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian with Tye Sheridan and Vincent D’Onofrio also boarding the cast. Franco will also act in the film, which is being produced by Scott Rudin. IM Global is handling international sales at Cannes. CAA is repping domestic rights.
Crowe and McCarthy seem about as perfect a fit as cheese and chutney. This long-in-the-works adaptation has been around for some time and finally looks like it might be moving forward. McCarthy’s critically-praised book is based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s and traces the journey of the Kid, a 14 year old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world when he joins a ruthless gang of scalphunters that includes the mysterious and menacing Judge Holden.
Plug Pulled On Russell Crowe-James Franco Blood Meridian Project Over Book Rights Issue – Update
UPDATE, Thursday, 1:57 AM: The mooted Russell Crowe-James Franco collaboration on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian has been shelved, mere moments after details of it first became public after it emerged that the filmmakers had not yet secured rights to the novel.
| By admin • 0 comments • 18 | News |
James Franco, Elysium Bandini Studios and UCLA are developing “Mississippi Requiem” — a single movie consisting of four black and white shorts — Variety has learned exclusively. Franco will star in the adaptation of William Faulkner’s stories, along with Topher Grace, Amy Smart and Alicia Witt.
The pic deals with issues of race, gender and class set in the American South during the early 20th Century. Beth Grant, Marianna Palka, Elayn Taylor, Sky Van Vliet and Zackary Arthur also star, along with musician George Lewis Jr., known as Twin Shadow.
The four Faulkner stories adapted include “A Dry September,” “That Evening Sun,” “Elly” and “A Rose for Emily.”
Elysium Bandini is partnered with UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television; Lee Caplin of Picture Entertainment; and Sabrina Coryell of Engaging the Senses Foundation.
This production is the second film collaboration this year under Elysium Bandini, the newly formed philanthropic studio model between Franco and Vince Jolivette’s Rabbit Bandini Productions, and Jennifer Howell’s The Art of Elysium.
Elysium Bandini’s existing film slate includes “Forever,” “Yosemite,” “Memoria” and the recently announced project at USC, “The Mad Whale.” All of the movies’ proceeds benefit programs for the nonprofit The Art of Elysium, a favorite charity of Kirsten Dunst, Eva Mendes, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.
Franco directed two previous Faulker adaptations — “As I Lay Dying” in 2013 and “The Sound and the Fury,” which premiered at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival.
Student filmmaking teams on the four short films comprising “Mississippi Requiem” are led by Arkesh Ajay, Jerell Rosales, Kelly Pike and Marta Savina, as well as UCLA producing students Juanita Cepero, Matt Russak, Aaron Edmonds, Safiya Farquharson, Zachary Hamby, Cecilia Albertini and Ariane Ackerberg.
Executive producers are Franco, Jolivette and Howell of Elysium Bandini; Coryell of Engaging the Senses Foundation; and Lee Caplin of Picture Entertainment, who also represents Faulkner’s estate.
| By admin • 0 comments • 32 | King Cobra • News |
King Cobra, based on the true story of gay porn star Brent Corrigan and his ill-fated director’s death, finally got off the ground at the urging of James Franco.
The actor and producer was fascinated by the character based on Bryan Kocis, the Cobra Video owner who quietly directed and produced Corrigan’s videos in his home and trademarked Brent Corrigan’s name — a valuable asset for which he was killed in 2007 by a pair of rival producers.
“He was a guy with a fairly low-key life but had this interest in pornography, and I love a story about somebody that decides, ‘I’m gonna change my life and go for it in a big way,’ ” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s world premiere, as part of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. In contrast with his character, one of the competing producers who “somehow thinks he needs to bring others down in order to get up, the movie presents two sides of something that’s interesting to me: One person has a dream and makes a positive change in order to pursue it, while another has the same dream and takes desperate measures in order to achieve it.”
Franco — who produced the film with Jordan Yale Levine, Scott Levenson, Vince Jolivette, Iris Torres and Shaun Sanghani — pushed his I Am Michael writer-director Justin Kelly to make the movie quickly. He passed the script onto his Adderall Diaries co-star, Christian Slater.
“It was definitely an out-of-the-box character for me — there was certainly a time in my life when I would’ve said, ‘No way. I would never do this,’ but I just didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to feel the fear and do it anyway,” Slater explained of playing the slain producer. “It’s a cutthroat business, literally, but every business has that element. This competitiveness and greed is all motivated by money.”
With reenactments of Corrigan’s most famous videos (but no male genitalia shown onscreen), Garrett Clayton was admittedly nervous to play Corrigan, whose real name is Sean Paul Lockhart. “I know everyone was surprised when I accepted the role because of Disney, let’s be honest,” said the Teen Beach actor. “But there’s a great message of overcoming obstacles and taking charge of your own life. He is someone who was trying to make the best of a crazy situation. It’s a big self-discovery piece.”
While the male actors said they were altogether eased by Kelly’s even-handed approach to both sides of the story, the women joked they had different reasons for joining the project.
“I was just happy to be in a movie where all the guys had to take off their clothes,” Molly Ringwald joked to the audience after the screening. Alicia Silverstone added, “I love all of these actors – they’re all very sexy!”
| By admin • 0 comments • 20 | Daddy • News |
James Franco isn’t known for his love of downtime. Along with starring in Hulu’s recently premiered JFK assassination series 11.22.63, the actor also has the HBO porn series The Deuce on the horizon, a film based on Tommy Wisseau’s cult classic The Room (dubbed The Disaster Artist), and is currently shooting the Christmas comedy Why Him?, which co-stars Bryan Cranston.
In addition to his on-screen work, Franco is also occupying whatever free time he has left with art projects. His latest is as one half of the music duo Daddy, which places him alongside Brooklyn-based artist and composer Tim O’Keefe, who created music for Franco’s two Faulkner adaptations As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury. It’s a high school-themed project that encompasses both music and film based on a series of poems Franco wrote, which were based on songs by The Smiths. The end result is the album Let Me Get What I Want (featuring music from Smiths bassist Andy Rourke), as well as a short film and upcoming series of exhibits. Here, Franco and O’Keefe discuss their unique project, creative process and Franco’s perception as some sort of enigma.How did your collaboration come about?
I know you two met at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
James Franco: We both were at RISD doing the graduate digital media studies program. I love adaptation and the idea that people would use paintings as inspiration for poems. I like that idea that you can do that with all mediums – using one to inspire another. And so I used the Smiths songs as a structuring and inspirational device for this 10-poem series. I thought the way the Smiths songs had this great irony and earnestness at the same time was exactly how high school felt. Everything was kind of so big and important, and yet so stupid at the same time. So exciting, yet also so boring. I thought the emotional tone of the Smiths songs would be perfect for this series of poems about teenagers I wanted to write. After I had those, at some point I gave them to Tim with the idea that we would turn all of them into this album.Tim O’Keefe: We were in printmaking class talking about making a full-length album. I remember we were listening to The Smiths when we were working on something and James told me about that series of poems. The strange thing that happened was afterwards my manager was at South by Southwest and happened to meet Andy Rourke. We said, “Do you think he’d be interested in this project?” So she reached out to his manager and within an hour they were like, “Yeah, he’s definitely into the idea.”
The project now exists as an album, film and exhibit. Was that the plan all along?
TO: We knew right off the bat, that’s how we approached it from the beginning for sure. The first one was more focused on Motown and we knew we wanted to take a different approach, less of a typical band and more of an art project that worked in multiple mediums. We were thinking of the film component, album component, and poem component together, because they all come from James’s poems.
James, there’s a preoccupation with high school themes in much of your work. Why do you find high school so fascinating?
JF: I guess it’s a place and a time for me when everything is heightened. A lot of things are new. It’s when you’re first entering the adult world and doing adult things for the first time. That time is the most exciting. People are not fully formed yet. When you’re an adult you’re going down a path of whoever you’re going to be for the rest of your life. When you’re in high school, a lot of that is still up in the air. To create work around that is very fruitful because you have these characters or emotions or experiences that feel so much bigger and more important than they do when you get older. I see it as a metaphor. I had a hard time in high school but I’m not working out anything that troubled me back then, as much as I find the struggles of people that age to serve as a device for me to say everything I want to say creatively. I’ve just found that’s one of my main topics and the best vehicle for me to say the things I want to say.
Tell me about the film component of the project. I understand it stars actual high school kids?
JF: I had the idea to give the poems to a film-making class my mother was teaching in Palo Alto. I’ve been teaching graduate film-making for six years now and in all of my classes they adapt some sort of source material into films. So I gave that structure to my mother and gave the high school students funding to adapt my poems into 10 short films. They gave me updates each step of the way but they had free reign to make what they wanted to. Then we took the material they shot and made them into our films which are more connected to the music. It became about students in Palo Alto working on films based on former students.Tim, how does it feel that everything is out there? How are people reacting to it?
TO: I’m really happy with the way the final product has come out, from the songs to the feel of the film itself. We worked on it for a long time. With James’s involvement, it gets a certain amount of attention and there’s a side to where people who are not necessarily fans of James would already dismiss it without knowing what it is. Some people will get it and some people won’t, and you just have to accept that.James, your recent cover of Rolling Stone had the headline The Mystery of James Franco. Why do you think people are so perplexed?
JF: Well. I do do a lot. (Laughs.) When it comes to Daddy, I didn’t train as a musician or make songs my entire life like Tim. I’ve been a big music fan, but I just haven’t been doing that. So when I approach something like this I want to give it the respect that it deserves. I want to be sure I work with great people who know what they’re doing like Tim or Andy. I do know that it will get attention because of who I am, but on the other hand I am a sort of earnest amateur. I’m not coming to this trying to take over the music biz. For me, it’s a cool project. So I’m going to enter it at a certain level and to me that’s okay because I don’t think our end goal depends on me being Beyonce. It’s an art project and it’s about persona as much as it is making songs that are great to listen to.
Do you know how to relax? Have you ever been on a vacation where you just did nothing?
JF: (Laughs.) Yeah, but then I think of all those things I still want to do and I’m like, I can’t. I do have that me time, it’s just that I’m in a fortunate position that I make a living doing what I love. When I’m working it doesn’t look a lot different from when I’m not working because I love it.
| By admin • 0 comments • 24 | News |
James Franco graces the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone, and in the issue, he opens up about his apparent infatuation with gay culture.
Franco reveals that what fuels his “obsession” is his passion for sharing the stories LGBT figures on screen, something that first resonated with him when he was a student.
He says:
“When I was studying at NYU, I took classes in critical studies, and one of my favorites was on queer cinema.“We’ve told the straight, heteronormative stories ad nauseam by now, in our movies, our shows, our commercials – everywhere.
“I think it’s healthy to make work that disrupts and questions that, and shows alternative narratives. That’s what an artist should do.”
Franco also tackled the rumors surrounding his sexuality, saying that he enjoys them, as they act as a “shield” when he dates women.
“One of the nice things about all that speculation is that it’s a smokescreen.”
Last year, the Oscar-nominated actor announced that he was in the midst of production for the film King Cobra, which will be based on the 2007 murder of gay porn filmmaker Bryan Kocis.Franco also starred in the 2015 biopic I am Michael, which tells the controversial true story of a gay activist who denounces homosexuality to become a Christian pastor.
In addition to his work in film, he released a book entitled Straight James / Gay James, last year.
Above and beyond the aforementioned projects, Franco has explored LGBTI narratives from behind the camera as director for the films Sal about the 1976 death of openly gay Rebel Without A Cause actor Sal Mineo, the short film Interior, Leather Bar, and the 2011 film The Broken Tower, about American poet Hart Crane.
| By admin • 0 comments • 26 | News • The Little Prince |
Streaming service Netflix has picked up distribution rights in America for animated feature The Little Prince, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Paramount Pictures had originally slated the title for a March 18th theatrical release, but dropped it last Saturday without any explanation. There’s no word though on when The Little Prince will show up on the streaming service.
The film is the first full-length (non-musical) adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s 1934 book of the same name. It combines both computer-generated and stop motion animation, and features the voices of Hollywood stars including Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, and Paul Rudd. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May last year, and was fairly well received. Critics praised the animation style, but noted that the film messes about a little too much with the source material, adding a “Disneyfied empowerment yarn” that’s “rather obviously taking its cue from Up.”
| By admin • 0 comments • 27 | 11.22.63 • News |
The latest adaptation of one of bestselling author Stephen King’s novels, Hulu mini-series “11.22.63,” launched with a premiere at L.A.’s Bruin Theater on Thursday. Executive producer J.J. Abrams told Variety how an article that star James Franco wrote about the book led to the actor’s casting.
“When I read this piece that Franco had written, it was so passionate about this character, about this world, about this story,” Abrams said. “He was also, in the piece, giving me s–t for being involved in too many projects, so I thought at the very least I should reach out and see if he wanted to be involved in this one with me.”
Franco revealed that King’s time-travel novel was one of the first books that he picked up after having to read 150 for his oral exams as a student in the Yale English department. The book caught his eye, and he was pulled in.
“I had to read 150 books, a lot of them were academic books, and as soon as I had passed my oral exams, I had the chance to read whatever I wanted to read,” Franco said. “I immediately jumped into it — it’s about 1,000 pages, and it was so engrossing. I read it aloud with my assistant in about a week.”
Franco plays Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, who is tasked by his friend and diner owner Al Templeton (Chris Cooper) to travel back in time to stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The catch? Traveling through time always puts him in October 1960 — meaning that he has to spend three years in the past until the big event.
Both Abrams and showrunner Bridget Carpenter believed that the colossal King novel was better suited for a mini-series format than a feature film — which it was originally intended to be.
“This book felt too long, too detailed, too nuanced, to condense,” Abrams said. “I thought, maybe the better idea would be to let it breathe and let it exist in a longer form.”
“The novel is 900 pages; it’s huge,” Carpenter said. “There is such a wealth of not just information, but a wealth of story and plot. You don’t want to lose anything.”
Hulu will release the first episode of “11.22.63” — whose cast also includes Sarah Gadon, Josh Duhamel, Daniel Webber, George MacKay, Lucy Fry, T.R. Knight, Nick Searcy, Leon Rippy and Gil Bellows — on Feb. 15 (Presidents’ Day).
After the screening, Hulu staged a party at the nearby Broxton Lot, which had been converted into a ’60s-themed diner, complete with vintage Nixon and Kennedy campaign posters, classic TV sets and a DJ spinning ’60s tunes. Even the food complemented the retro theme, from the beef wellington hors d’oeuvres to the mini pecan and cherry pies.
| By admin • 0 comments • 32 | 11.22.63 • News |
Don’t let Stephen King’s name fool you: The eight-part miniseries 11.22.63 may be adapted from the horror master’s 2011 best-seller, but the story about a down-on-his-luck English teacher tasked with time-traveling to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy isn’t exactly terrifying.
Not at first, anyway. When Jake (James Franco) leaves the present for the past through a portal in his friend Al’s (Chris Cooper) diner, he arrives in 1960 (not 1958, one of many tweaks from the book approved by King, who serves as an executive producer). Jake’s not yet too concerned with Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber), who’s still years away from plotting his fateful shots. He has time to settle down, upgrade his wardrobe, and, most important, fall for a young librarian named Sadie (Sarah Gadon) and the optimistic era she represents. “Honestly, this is a love story dressed in the coat of a spy thriller,” exec producer Bridget Carpenter tells EW. “It’s a man falling in love with not just the woman he meets in the ’60s, but the ’60s itself.”
But as time travelers tend to learn, time flies — and history doesn’t like to be changed. As Jake prepares for 1963, the scary starts happening — he dodges threatening obstacles like car crashes and freak fires that keep him from tracking Oswald; plus, he has to make sense of a world in which he doesn’t belong, a feeling Franco says he understands. “It’s discombobulating,” he says of playing a time-traveler. “Jake has to pretend he’s not from the future, so he’s performing. He’s doing what I do for a living.”
The detailed sets helped make pretending easier for the actor. Production aimed to make the past look alive by finding era-appropriate costumes that showed wear and tear and by using historical footage of the Kennedys in place of casting look-alikes. “I wanted not to feel like I was looking at the pages of a magazine from 1960,” Carpenter explains, “but to feel like I was surrounded by 1960.”
Still, nailing the look while also untangling storylines (and timelines) made for an intimidating writers’ room. “It looked like A Beautiful Mind,” Carpenter recalls, laughing. “There were cards packed on every single bulletin board, and some tucked into corners.”
Even more packed was Franco’s schedule. He found time to direct an episode, though he originally wanted to do even more, having asked King after reading the novel if he could work on bringing the story to screen. But by then, J.J. Abrams was already on the job as EP. “I said, ‘Well, there’s no way I’m gonna outbid J.J. Abrams,’ ” Franco says, laughing. Luckily, he didn’t totally lose out. “Weeks later, J.J. emailed and said, ‘I think you’d be great as the lead.’”
11.22.63 hits Hulu on Feb. 15.
| By admin • 0 comments • 23 | News |
One of Hollywood’s enduring mysteries is how James Franco does it all — acting, directing, writing books, teaching university classes, pursuing multiple post-graduate degrees and, occasionally, (rumor has it) sleeping.
Now the multihyphenate star of “Milk” and “127 Hours” has another new venture, a nonprofit film studio that he says combines many of his passions — making films, teaching student filmmakers and benefiting his favorite charity.
Elysium Bandini Studios brings together the Art of Elysium charity with Franco’s Rabbit Bandini production banner to support the film projects of students and professionals, with any proceeds going entirely to Art of Elysium. The 19-year-old charity brings actors and other artists into contact with people in need — from hospitalized children, to the elderly and homeless to, soon, veterans and prisoners. As many as 4,000 artists work with needy clients on projects ranging from essays to poetry to plays, films and art installations.
Franco and producing partner Vince Jolivette met in an acting class two decades ago, and began volunteering in 2005 with Art of Elysium, putting on Christmas plays at a children’s hospital, making films and raising money. The duo also began making student films.
The plan for bigger things emerged in a 2012 meeting with Art of Elysium founder and CEO Jennifer Howell. “We thought we could create a nonprofit film studio where we gave talented young filmmakers a platform to do their thing and fulfill their artistic vision, plus give back to the community through Art of Elysium,” said Jolivette. “To us, that was so much.” Added Howell: “It was everything.”
The upstart operation already has finished 14 features — most directed by students from UCLA, Cal Arts, USC and NYU (all schools where Franco has taught filmmaking) — some featuring well-known names including Natalie Portman, Kristen Wiig, Jimmy Kimmel, Jessica Chastain, Whoopi Goldberg and Franco. “When these actors come back and work with the young people, it’s a great reminder of the joy of what we do, and why we got into it in the first place,” Franco said.
“Yosemite,” from director Gabrielle Demeestere, features Franco in the story of young people growing up in the Bay Area; it got solid reviews and a brief theatrical release. Other Elysium Bandini creations are available for distribution. The intent is to create a steady source of funds for Art of Elysium, a favorite charity of many in Hollywood, including Kirsten Dunst, Eva Mendes, producer Tim Headington, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.
Jolivette, Howell and Franco are running the fledgling shingle, though they hope to eventually find an executive to take over. Funding has come from multiple donors and via innovative channels, such as an Indiegogo campaign that brought in $689,000 for three initial Elysium Bandini films. Franco says the road to positive cash flow is within reach, because the vast majority of workers on both sides of the camera donate their time. And their films typically cost $200,000 or less.
“This is students and charity coming together to make their own thing, a new thing,” Franco said. “Hopefully, it’s a model that can expand, and there can be others besides me who can take on these projects.”
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