Committed to his crusade to adapt every novel ever written for the screen – all right, just the ones that pique his interest – James Franco is setting up yet another adaptation. He’s planning to star in and direct** The Long Home** and has Josh Hutcherson lined up to co-star.
Adapted from William Gay’s book, the story is set in rural 1940s Tennessee, where a young man (Hutcherson) scores a job building a honky tonk bar for a charismatic, scheming bootlegger. But trouble finds him when he falls for a young woman that the criminal is grooming to become a prostitute, and that’s before he discovers that the man murdered his father ten years previously.
This isn’t the first time Hutcherson and Franco will have worked together – Franco also cast the **Hunger Games **actor in another of his projects, the John Steinbeck adaptation In Dubious Battle, which has yet to set a release date.
As for Hutcherson’s big franchise duty, he’ll next be seen in the final Hunger Games film, Mockingjay – Part 2, which is out here on November 20.