Show me the person that claims they can predict the next step in James Franco’s career, and I’ll show you a liar. The man’s gone from playing James Dean in a TV movie, to “Freaks & Geeks” to “Spider-Man” frenemy to stoner comedy icon in “Pineapple Express” to, most recently, a regular on the soap opera “General Hospital.” And that’s without mentioning the short he directed that’s premiered at Cannes, his “Saturday Night Live” documentary and his lead role in Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours.”
Only a few hours ago, he signed on to the comedy “Ricky Stanicky,” but now, he’s taken another left-turn, with the breaking news from Variety/Deadline that he’ll be toplining Fox’s “Planet of the Apes” prequel “Rise of the Apes.” The project, directed by British helmer Rupert Wyatt, starts filming July 5 for a release next summer and Franco, who apparently hit it off with Wyatt at a meeting last week, will play a young scientist working on genetic experiments on simians, which leads to the monkey revolution.
While we’re pretty huge Franco fans (and Deadline suggest that Fox are too, being impressed by his work in the Boyle film), we can’t help but be a little sad that he’s taken this one. But then, maybe this’ll turn out to be more interesting that it appears? Wyatt’s debut “The Escapist” is deeply underrated, and he always has a reason for picking the roles he does. Let’s hope he’s doing this one out of the intrinsic quality of the project, rather than as a piece of performance art like his role in “General Hospital.”
