James Franco is starring in a Middle Eastern TV crime drama penned by Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak. Check out a teaser below.
Alongside a cast of actors who hail from the MENA region, the Oscar-nominated 127 Hours star recently wrapped on Karantina, which is being shopped for the first time at Mipcom Cannes this week. Hasak told Deadline he hopes the “gamechanger” crime drama will “do for MENA what Fauda did for Israel and Squid Game did for Korea.”
Based on the German series Tempel, Franco plays an American laying low from the FBI in Beirut who has opened a club called the Miami Rainbow Club, a “taste of Americana,” according to Hasak.
The show’s lead is Yaqoub Al Farhan as Dahab, who is released from jail and promises his paraplegic wife and teenage daughter that he will never return to a world of crime, instead taking a job as an elderly caregiver. But when his daughter’s expensive violin is smashed by a gang who wants to evict his family and have their area gentrified, Dahab’s life is sent spiraling as he attempts to gather enough money to buy a new violin. Joining Al Farhan are Reham Alkassar, Yasmina El Abd, Cynthia Khalifeh, Nicolas Mouawad and Earl Cave.
Joining with Dan March’s Dynamic Television, Hasak said he had first pondered setting the show in Detroit and pitching it to U.S. buyers before he settled on MENA. Asacha Media Group and MBC are also attached.“The themes are so universal when you think about gentrification and a father living at the bottom of the social ladder,” added Hasak. “So this is a family-first show, a crime show.”
Hasak said he was inspired by the work of Capernaum director Nadine Labaki, the first female Arab director to be nominated for an Oscar, and was in awe of her “Lebanese films in the style of Italian neo-realism that don’t condescend but offer a realistic, heartfelt perspective of the working poor.”
While some MENA movies have gained global acclaim, he is hopeful Karantina will be one of the first TV shows from the region to be a worldwide hit. “You’ve never seen it in television and I know they can do it,” he added.
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James Franco is stepping up his acting comeback and will play one of the lead roles in Danish director Bille August’s post-World War II coming-of-age drama Me, You, adapted from the novel Tu, Mia by Erri De Luca.
Franco will star alongside Tom Hollander (The Night Manager) and Daisy Jacob (Vanity Fair), with principal photography set to take place in Ischia starting in September.
Franco stepped away from acting after a series of allegations of sexual misconduct made by multiple women in early 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement. Additionally, in 2019, students at Franco’s now-closed film and acting school, Studio 4, sued the actor and his partners accusing them of pushing acting students into performing in increasingly explicit sex scenes on camera. In 2021, Franco and associated entities agreed to pay $2,235,000 to resolve the lawsuit.
Set in Ischia in the 1950s, Me, You focuses on 16-year-old Marco, who spends his days “sailing in the tranquil waters of the bay of Naples with hardened fisherman Nicola,” played by Franco, “who beguiles Marco with his wounded tales of the sea and the war following his military service as a U.S. GI,” according to a plot description. “Shy and curious, Marco sets out to experience all that his enchanting new surroundings, so far removed from his native London and gloomy Scottish boarding school, have to offer.”
Marco is on holidays with his parents (Hollander plays his father Edward) and “embarks on a summer that will change him forever when he meets the enigmatic Caia, 20,” played by Jacob, and falls in love with her. “A beautiful complicity is established between the two when Caia reveals her painful past; a childhood stolen by the SS and a father who thew his daughter out of a train in Yugoslavia to save her from the horrors of a concentration camp. The harrowing stories of Nicola and Caia awaken a ferocious resentment for the SS in Marco and, when he encounters a group of rude German tourists on the island, he decides to avenge Caia’s pain. This sets off alarm bells for Caia who avoids him but, fueled by his infatuation and impossible love for her, Marco plans an arson attack on the German’s villa to prove himself worthy of Caia’s affections.”
Directed by August (Pelle the Conqueror, The Best Intentions), with a screenplay written by Greg Latter (Goodbye Bafana), Me, You is produced by Brilliant Pictures’ Sean O’Kelly (Iron Sky) and Marc Bikindou (Black Dahlia, Deception), Cristaldi Pics’ Mark Hammond (The Traitor), together with Jad Ben Ammar and Leo Maidenberg (Deep Fear, Sisters in Arms) who are on board as co-producers.
“I am excited to board this phenomenal project and to be working with the legendary Bille August,” said Franco. “I’m a huge fan of his work, and Me, You is a truly brilliant script.”
London- and Rome-based Brilliant Pictures is handling worldwide sales rights. Franco is represented by Anonymous Content and United Talent Agency in the U.S., as well as Adequat Agency in France. Hollander is represented by Anonymous Content in the U.S. and United Agents in the U.K.
Before this year’s Cannes Film Festival and market, it was unveiled that Franco was set to star in action thriller Mace from The Singing Detective director Jon Amiel.
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Sorry I haven’t update site for so long had some HD driver Trouble.
By admin • 0 comments • 47 | Casting News • Directing |
James Franco is in talks to direct and star in a film about prolific children’s book author, cartoonist, and lyricist Shel Silverstein.
Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair will pen the adaptation based on Lisa Rogak’s book “A Boy Named Shel.”
MWM Studios, formerly known as OddLot Entertainment, will produce along with McG and Mary Viola’s production company, Wonderland Sound and Vision. MWM will also co-finance.
Franco and Vince Jolivette will exec produce through Rowena Films, along with Adrian Alperovich for MWM Studios. Stacy Keppler will co-produce with Sean Sorensen.
Silverstein was also a poet, singer, songwriter, and screenwriter. His work was translated into more then 30 languages and sold over 20 million copies. The film will focus not only on his struggles professionally, but personally as well, and trace how he became the iconic author he is today.
Franco is set to start his awards campaign for his dramedy “The Disaster Artist,” which details the making of the now-cult-classic “The Room.” The film and Franco are expected to be Oscar contenders.
He is also coming off strong reviews for the HBO series “The Deuce,” which was just picked up for a second season by the network. He is repped by UTA and Anonymous Content.
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Fox is in negotiations with James Franco to star in a movie about the Marvel Comics character Multiple Man.
The studio is also in talks with “Wonder Woman” writer Allan Heinberg to pen the script. It’s negotiating with Simon Kinberg and his Genre Films to produce with Franco through his Ramona Films with brother Dave Franco and Vince Jolivette.
Multiple Man, aka Jamie Madrox, is a character in the X-Men universe who received cloning powers at birth. In the comics, Jamie’s father, who works at the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Center, moves his family to a farm, where his son is fitted with a special suit — designed by X-Men leader Professor X — to control his powers. The suit malfunctions, causing Multiple Man to go crazy.
Jeremy Kramer will oversee the movie for Fox, if the deals go through. Franco and Kinberg have been developing Fox’s “The Hardy Men” as a potential starring vehicle for both James and Dave Franco, who would portray the grown-up versions of The Hardy Boys.
Fox has scheduled three movies in its expanding “X-Men” universe for 2018, with “New Mutants” slated to open on April 13, “Deadpool 2” on June 1, and “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” on Nov. 2. It also recently set “Gambit,” the “X-Men” spinoff starring Channing Tatum, for Feb. 14, 2019.
Franco’s “The Disaster Artist,” which has been embraced by critics, opens Dec. 1. He is repped by UTA and Anonymous Content. The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.
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The Coen Brothers’ anticipated six-episode Western anthology series The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is reportedly close to casting James Franco for what sounds like a very James Franco role. According to the Tracking Board, Franco will star opposite Ralph Ineson and Stephen Root in the “Near Algodones” installment, playing “a high-plains drifter whose own fecklessness dogs his attempts at bank robbery and cattle driving.” (Others cast in the series include Tim Blake Nelson, Tyne Daly, and Zoe Kazan.) Setting aside the wonderful image of James Franco haplessly herding cattle for a moment — let’s hope he hasn’t shaved that ’70s mustache just yet — the news comes on the heels of Franco completing filming on about a dozen other projects that are awaiting release, including David Simon’s HBO drama The Deuce and his own (apparently quite good) film The Disaster Artist, based on the making of The Room. So to keep track: Within the next year or so, we’ll see Franco immerse himself in the world of ’70s porn, re-create the bizarre accent of Tommy Wiseau — he at least got some extra practice on that one — and play a feckless drifter under the direction of the Coens. Dare to predict what’s next?
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James Franco is coming on board “Alien: Covenant,” the sequel to Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus.”
He joins Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce — who are reprising their roles from “Prometheus” — along with newcomers Katherine Waterston, Demian Bichir, Billy Crudup, and Danny McBride. 20th Century Fox had no comment.
Scott is directing from a script by Jack Paglen, Michael Green, and John Logan. The film follows the colony ship Covenant as it heads toward a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy. Crew members discover what they believe to be an uncharted paradise, which turns out to be a dark, menacing world in which the only inhabitant is the synthetic David (Fassbender), a survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
The film is the sixth in Scott’s “Alien” franchise and arrives in theaters on May 19, 2017. Fox originally planned to release the movie in August, but decided several months ago to move it forward three months.
“Prometheus” was set in the late 21st Century and about 30 years before the events in Scott’s 1979 movie “Alien.” “Prometheus,” which generated $403.3 million at the worldwide box office, followed scientists aboard the spaceship Prometheus who discovered the remains of an advanced civilization developing weapons that could wipe out the human race.
The original “Alien,” starring Sigourney Weaver, was followed by three sequels in 1986, 1992, and 1997.
Franco is currently starring in Fox’s “Why Him?” opposite Bryan Cranston. The comedy opens this Friday.