It’s all fun and games until James Franco says your project will result in “a terrible film, with a horrible reason d’être: to make money off someone else’s creativity.” Those were the actor’s words about “Spring Breakers: The Second Coming,” but the producers aren’t taking it lightly. They’ve hit back at the star of the first movie by mocking Franco’s blockbuster choices in the past.
“Let’s see if I can remember all of the sequels James has done,” Chris Hanley of Muse Productions told Variety. “ ‘The Great and Mighty Oz,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘Planet of the Apes’ ” he said, while also throwing in that “he’s pushing hard to help set up the ‘Pineapple Express’ sequel. I guess he thinks only ‘too big to fail studio films’ are the artistically valid ventures.”
While Hanley seems to misunderstand the difference between a sequel and reboot but it seems he was mostly digging at Franco for the various blockbuster movies he’s done for some reason. And of course, one only has to look at the myriad of side projects and indie films Franco does to realize the dude approaches everything as if its artistically valid. But actually, Franco’s mostly concerned about a sequel moving ahead without the consent of director Harmony Korine, with the followup instead being helmed by Jonas Akerlund and penned by Irvine Welsh.
“These aren’t weak or lame artists and I think our track record speaks for itself,” Hanley said of those picks.
But let’s be honest, this is all about branding as much as his Muse partner Roberta Hanley claims they’ve “done nothing but smuggle important artists into Hollywood.” As Hanley points out, it’s his property and he can do what he wants with it, because legally, they have the rights to “all prequels, sequels, remakes, animation spinoffs.” Sounds very artistically valid.
As for Korine? “We had a great relationship with Harmony Korine and now we’re exploring a new incarnation of ‘Spring Breakers,’ ” said another producer Jordan Gertner. Alrighty, then.
More to come? Most likely, and we’ll see how it affects sales (or not) at Cannes.
