Every once in a while, Hollywood conspires to give us two remarkably similar titles in rapid succession. While to the audiences, they can look like a bit of copycatism, the truth is often more tangled up in the machinations of the movie industry. That's how we're getting a movie about James Franco navigating Hollywood as a tradesman in 1969 shortly after we saw Brad Pitt's turn as a Manson-era stuntman in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
James Franco's Zeroville has quite a few things in favor of it not being a stolen idea. For one, it's an adaptation of a novel from 2007. For another, it was filmed all the way back in 2014 and merely got lost in the crumbling of the distribution company Alchemy. The defunct distributor optioned the film and then promptly went bankrupt, leaving Franco's movie in limbo. However, myCinema recently acquired the rights and plans to drop it in theaters on September 20.
The story follows Franco as Vikar, a set-builder with a prominent tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on the back of his head. Vikar falls into the film industry while people like Francis Ford Coppola, Dennis Hopper and Martin Scorsese are re-shaping it in the late '60s and early '70s. Vikar becomes obsessed with an actress played by Megan Fox and it doesn't seem like things go well for either of them. The film features an all-star cast, including Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson and Jacki Weaver.
Take a look at the trailer up top.
