Another week, another announcement that James Franco is being approached for a film. Despite the fact that he would seem to be booked up until the heat death of the universe, Franco is now apparently in talks to co-star in Lovelace, a biopic of porn legend Linda Lovelace that Howl directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are putting together.
Kate Hudson has been offered the central role and the directors, who have been trying to get the thing going for a year now, are talking to their Howl leading man about playing Chuck Traynor, Lovelace’s sometime husband.
William Merritt Johnson has written the script, based on Eric Danville’s book The Complete Linda Lovelace. Traynor’s relationship with his wife was stormy – he was a pornographer at the time she made Deep Throat and years later, after quitting the business and talking about her past, she accused him of bullying her into porn and prostitution through a number of unsavoury methods.
As mentioned, Franco is, of course is slightly busy, given that he has a couple of movies he wants to direct, is getting set to co-host the Oscars and appear on Broadway later in the year. And that’s on top of his various hobbies / performance art work / poetry / college courses / launching films like Your Highness and Howl.
The subject of Lovelace is also in demand these days, with the tortured Inferno also aiming to make it through development hell. After waiting months for Lindsay Lohan to stop being thrown in jail/rehab, the producers of that film have hired Malin Akerman to play the lead.
Yet according to Deadline’s report, both this pic and Inferno are finding it tough to lock in funding, so if Franco were able to find five minutes in his schedule to join Lovelace, it would certainly help Epstein and Friedman get ahead in the cash race…