James Franco never slows down, and now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he plans to produce and act in a film with plentiful roles for himself.
Onboard the James Franco Express
While on tour for his latest film The Disaster Artist, James Franco continued his signature breakneck pace by discussing upcoming projects. “…we’re going to take this superhero thing and really just push it into a new genre. So we’re working with Simon Kinberg on an X-Men property.” Franco cites R rated films Logan and Deadpool as inspiration for his upcoming project. He plans to produce and act as the main character in the film: Multiple Man.
Multiple Man or Jamie Madrox already appeared in the X-Men films, showing up in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Details about the upcoming solo film are scarce, with only Franco confirmed.
In the last few years Franco himself seems to have been multiple men: trying his hand at teaching, writing, acting, producing, and even going back to school for his Ph.D. “…I was following my interest, and that as weird and as disparate as a lot of those pursuits might have seemed from the outside…in my head it felt like there was a connection.”
Read More on James Franco’s Hulu Project
We have to ask ourselves: has Franco crossed the line from hard-working to narcissistic? The Disaster Artist is a navel-gazing film about a navel-gazing film. It follows Tommy Wiseau making his pet-project film The Room, categorized as the best worst movie ever made. Wiseau promoted the film as a “Tennessee Williams-level drama” (it’s not), but it became popular for the “dark-comedy” aspects. Unfortunately, the dark comedy is in the real-life people who spent time working on it, rather than the fictional characters it portrays.
Franco admits Wiseau’s reasons for making the film where self-centered at best. “…Tommy Wiseau, he is what happens when you don’t get past your James Dean phase. He actually thinks he is James Dean, I think.” So what does it say about Franco that he created a film about Wiseau’s project, casting himself in the leading role? And what about the fact that he wants to co-produce (Franco owns Ramona Films with his brother) and star in a movie about a man who can literally make more of himself?
