News

Not unlike Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s rapport with the festival, Sundance has become a place where James Franco/RabbitBandini Productions gets to both test-drive and showcase his creative output. Last year’s fest saw him showcase both Interior. Leather Bar. and kink, and while we fully expect to see the filmmaker there for Bukowski, with Holy Land as a possible outside shot, there potentially might be room in the New Frontier section for an anthology of films that were ultimately “patched” together by Nyu graduate students. Closer to Tar than the previous pair of mentioned titles, shooting on Black Dog, Red Dog began in early 2012 with a tally of ten, mostly inexperienced filmmakers that for at least nine of them had to win a contest to be part of the “larger” project.

Gist: Featuring Franco, Olivia Wilde, Chloë Sevigny, Logan Marshall-Green, this is based on Stephen Dobyns‘ book of poetry.

Production Co.

James Franco doesn't stop for one second. Currently filming "As I Lay Dying," Franco has been busy overseeing two other projects this year, omnibus efforts by Nyu grad students, "Tar" and "Black Dog Red Dog," based the poems of C.K. Williams and Stephen Dobyns, respectively. And one of them is ready to see the light day. The Rome Film Festival has announced that "Tar" will make be making its world premiere (as well as a Franco short entitled "Dreams," of course) as it rolls out the red carpet next month. Remember these names -- Edna Biesold, Sarah-Violet Bliss, Bruce Thierry Cheung, Gabrielle Demeestere, Alexis Gambis, Shruti Ganguly, Brooke Goldfinch, Omar Zuniga Hidalgo, Shripriya Mahesh, Pamela Romanowsky, Tine Thomasen, Virginia Urreiztieta -- because they are students-turned-filmmakers, and undoubtedly some of them will be moving on to even bigger and better things. The project saw Franco working the phones a...

James Franco is planning two separate features based on collections of poetry which students in the actor's filmmaking class are adapting reports Variety.

Each student directed a short film based on an individual poem, entries have then been woven into cohesive, feature-length narratives.

Franco, Mila Kunis and Jessica Chastain play roles in "Tar" which is based on the 1983 book of poems by Pulitzer Prize winner C.K. Williams. This project is wrapped and could premiere later this year.

Franco, Olivia Wilde, Chloe Sevigny and Whoopi Goldberg star in the second film "Black Dog, Red Dog" based on the 1984 book of poems by Stephen Dobyns. That film is still being edited.

Poet at heart James Franco has explored the works of writerly talents like Allen Ginsberg in Howl and Anthony Hecht in The Feast of Stephen, to name a few. The actor — who also happens to be a New York University professor — also teaches a class about poetry and film. Now, Franco will be overseeing a poetry-inspired project for Nyu grad students that will result in two anthology features, according to Indiewire. Award-winning American poet C.K. Williams' 1983 book Tar — set around the poet's experience with the Three Mile Island nuclear-reactor accident — and Stephen Dobyns' National Poetry Series award winner Black Dog, Red Dog will be the focus of the works. This wasn't an opportunity open to all students. Instead, they had to win a...

Read More...

By now, we’re all aware that James Franco is a fairly multifaceted fella. He dips his toe in comedy, drama, short films, experimental films, and higher education. For his latest project, he’s assembled an impressive cast for two feature films based on a couple of books of poems. Variety reports that Franco stars alongside Mila Kunis and Jessica Chastain in an adaptation of the 1983 book of poems Tar by C.K Williams, and he also enlisted Olivia Wilde, Chloe Sevigny and Whoopi Goldberg for an adaptation of Black Dog, Red Dog by Stephen Dobyns. For Tar, Franco and executive producer Victorino Noval selected 10 directors via a competition at Nyu’s Tisch School of the Arts to helm segments of the film. He also used a similar formula for Black Dog, Red Dog. Tar is completed and could premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, while Black Dog is still in the editing phase.

Already the out-and-out definition of a entertainment multi-hyphenate, poetry is something that also evidently flows in James Franco's blood, and is a world he loves to delve into for his film projects. Franco has made several shorts based on poems, including works by Anthony Hecht ("The Feast Of Stephen"), Spencer Reece ("The Clerk's Tale") and Frank Bidart ("Herbert White") before playing Hart Crane in "The Broken Tower" and Allen Ginsberg in "Howl." And it doesn't end there either.

Franco has now shepherded a project for Nyu graduate students that'll result in two poetry-centric anthology features: "Tar" based on C.K. William's book of poems of the same name, and "Black Dog, Red Dog," based on a book of poems by Stephen Dobyns. Students -- who had to win a competition for the opportunity -- separately helmed shorts based on individual poems with their entries combined into a cohesive feature-length narrative.

I spent the weekend in New York City. After taking a 6 a.m. flight from New Orleans, I landed at Laguardia and went straight to Queens, where my Nyu students were shooting the last segment of their collaborative film based on the poet Stephen Dobyns' 1984 collection,Black Dog, Red Dog. The segment was based on a poem called "The Gun," about two unsupervised boys who read comic books and smoke cigarettes, until one holds the other at gunpoint and tells him to take his pants off. The room next to the set was occupied by one of the household's daughters, and it was filled with neatly hung posters of a boy band I'd never heard of, called something like Really Big Rush. While the students were setting up a new shot, I took a book from the daughter's shelf. There were two to choose from, and you'd think I...

Actress Chloe Sevigny agreed to star in James Franco's new movie Black Dog, Red Dog for free, as a favour to the student filmmaker.

The 127 Hours star turned to his celebrity pals and asked them to appear in the project, based on poet Stephen Dobyns' memoir - and he managed to convince Sevigny, Olivia Wilde and Whoopi Goldberg to waive their usual salaries to help him make the low-budget drama, which is made up of a series of short films directed by Franco and a group of his wannabe filmmakers at New York University.

And Big Love star Sevigny admits she enjoyed offering up her on-screen talents because it kept her occupied while in between jobs.

She jokes to New York Magazine, "I'm out of work right now. I thought it would be good to help some young filmmakers and busy myself so I don't go crazy and obsess over buying a cat."

Black Dog, Red Dog is expected to be released later this year.

Here are a few interesting and/or noteworthy projects that were recently added to IMDbPro's database of development titles:

American Darling – Jessica Chastin's star continues to rise in 2012. The actress, who recently signed on for Katheryn Bigelow's upcoming Osama Bin Laden thriller, is also reportedly set to team up with Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of the Russell Banks novel about a New England woman's life in Liberia from the mid-1970s to the early '90s.

Black Dog, Red Dog – James Franco stars in and produces this feature based on poet Stephen Dobyns' award-winning book of the same name.

Heck – MGM has tapped About a Boy's Chris Weitz has to rewrite an adaptation of Dale E. Basye's humorous modern-day spin on Dante’s Inferno, featuring two kids navigating their way through purgatory after a camping excursion goes terribly wrong.

Untitled Wim Wenders Architecture Documentary – German auteur Wim Wenders is following up his dance documentary, Pina, with another 3-D project, this time focusing on more stationary subjects – architecture.

Los Wildcats del Norte – Filmmaker Thom Eberhardt (Night of the Comet) teams up with writer Christine Vasquez (Naked Fear) to develop this drama about a group of young musicians who set out to play the bars of northern New Mexico.