John Hamburg knows a little something about comedies where parents disapprove of their spawn’s dating choices – he wrote all three of the Meet The Parents films. He’s dipping into that well again for a new movie, called Why Him? and he has James Franco in talks to star.
The script, which Hamburg co-wrote with **Bad Neighbours **director Nick Stoller and **The Oranges **writer Ian Helfer, finds a Midwestern father taking his family to visit his daughter, who is attending Stanford. But the Christmastime trip is soured somewhat when he meets her boyfriend, an ambitious Internet billionaire (probably think Sean Parker more than Mark Zuckerberg) – the role Franco is up for – and immediately takes a disliking to him.
Thus kicks off a battle for his daughter’s attention as the dad tries to compete with this charismatic new rival. Hamburg, who most recently made TV movie Good Session, is hoping to have the cameras cranking this year. Franco, in addition to the many projects he’s working on himself, will be seen in Werner Herzog’s Queen Of The Desert, real-life crime drama True Story and I Am Michael. On the small screen, he recently signed to star in Hulu’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel 11/22/63.