Nearly four years after initially securing distribution, James Franco’s movie Zeroville is finally going to hit theaters later this year. We initially reported on this one back in 2014, so it’s been a long time coming. This movie has a stacked cast and was made long before Franco was subject to quite a few sexual misconduct allegations, when he was unquestionably a top talent in the industry. In any event, the movie has finally found a new home in myCinema and, at long last, it’s going to be released.
James Franco both directs and stars in Zeroville, which is an adaptation of Steve Erickson’s novel. It was originally supposed to arrive in 2016, after the domestic distribution rights were secured by Alchemy the year prior at the Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately, Alchemy went under just a few months later and the movie wound up being caught up as part of the fallout, given the company’s financial woes. Cut to roughly three years later and non-traditional distributor myCinema has stepped up to give this thing a release in September. Aside from Franco, the cast includes Seth Rogen, Megan Fox, Joey King, Will Ferrell, Dave Franco, Danny McBride and Jacki Weaver.
Basically, myCinema is an internet-based distributor that allows individual theaters to license its movies. The theaters can do so for any number of weeks they so choose. Simple as that, but very outside the box. The company, which also handles marketing for their titles, currently works with roughly 500 screens spread throughout the U.S. and Canada. So, for the time being, it isn’t clear exactly how many screens the movie will end up playing on, as that will be entirely dependent on interest from the theaters that they work with.
Zeroville centers on Vikar (James Franco), a wide-eyed innocent in love with the movies who is on a weekend trip to Hollywood. He’s a naive newcomer to the city, rocking a huge tattoo of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor inked on his shaved skull. Vikar is allured by his love of cinema. Along the way, he’ll encounter several key figures including Viking Man (Seth Rogen), gatekeeper to all the right parties and a cigar-chomping surf hippie, who serves as his guide to the town. There’s also the foul-mouthed industry veteran Dotty (Jacki Weaver), the sinister financier (Danny McBride) and a femme fatale by the name of Soledad (Megan Fox), who serves as the fuel for his exploration of Hollywood.
While James Franco has been subject to more than a little controversy in recent years, given the cast associated with this movie, and the story behind it, it’s hard not to at least be a little curious. Especially considering that this is much of the same team associated with movies such as This is the End and The Disaster Artist. Hopefully, now that a new distributor is on board, we’ll be seeing a trailer for this lost movie sooner rather than later. This news was first reported by Deadline.
