Carlos Bastarache: franco.jpg

Monday, 27 November 2017

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It’s been 10 years since Sam Raimi’s infamous Spider-Man 3, the one where Spidey goes evil and dances and ends with everyone crying. James Franco, who spent the decade that followed living a life almost impressively stranger than that film, is ready to get back into the superhero movie saddle, this time as producer and performer, apparently confirming the rumors that he’ll be taking on the Multiple Man.

In a conversation with the Hollywood Reporter, Franco looked back fondly on his time with Raimi and his fellow Spider-Man actors, praising the franchise for establishing “the template for everything that we see now in these superhero films.” When asked if he would be interested in doing another superhero movie, Franco broke the news: he’s already developing one.

I don’t know how much I can say. But I will say I am producing and performing in it. Or will perform in it. It’s early stages. I think probably what I can say is, like anything, there’s a need to develop more. I have a company with my brother now called Ramona Films. We’re developing all kinds of movies. Our bottom line MO is, how can we push this into new ground? A little bit, but still make it entertaining?

His inspiration going into this film lies in some recent “hard R” hits of the last couple years.

What I love about what Simon Kinberg and Fox and the X-Men people have done with Deadpool and Logan — it took a while to get there, maybe 10 years, but they are going to go hard R. And we’re going to take, you know, this superhero thing and really just push it into a new genre. Deadpool‘s almost like an action romantic comedy. And Logan‘s like a western, you know?

Franco doesn’t outright say the character is Jamie Madrox, aka, Multiple Man, but he did say he’s working with writer-producer Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and director of the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix) and that the character is an X-Men property.