James Franco is taking his good Disaster Artist press and running with it. Not only is he joining the X-Men universe in a film he’s producing and starring in, he’s also signed onto A Boy Named Shel, a film based on Lisa Rogak’s book about the life of songwriter, cartoonist, and children’s author Shel Silverstein.
The book, and presumably its film adaptation, follows Silverstein through a life “with an incurable case of wanderlust.” Silverstein was a famous serial womanizer who wrote plays with David Mamet and partied at the Playboy Mansion in addition to writing and drawing some of the most lingering children’s literature of all time, such as The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends. He also once released an album and this is what its cover looked like.
Here’s a song from the album. You can decide for yourself if you also hear the Benny Hill theme in it because I sure do.
You can expect to see a lot of Franco in the near future. Not including A Boy Named Shel, Franco’s IMDb lists 13 upcoming projects either completed or in production for 2018, at least four of which he’s directing, including Zeroville, with Will Ferrell and Seth Rogen, and Future World which also stars Milla Jovovich and Snoop Dogg.
