James Franco Confirms That He's Developing a New X-MEN Film

Last week, it was reported that James Franco would star in and be involved with the development of a new X-Men film called Multiple Man. Franco has now officially confirmed that he is involved with a superhero project. He recently told THR:

“I do have a superhero that I am developing. I don't know how much I can say. But I will say I am producing and performing in it. Or will perform in it. It's early stages. I think probably what I can say is, like anything, there's a need to develop more. I have a company with my brother now called Ramona Films. We're developing all kinds of movies. Our bottom line MO is, how can we push this into new ground? A little bit, but still make it entertaining? So that separates it from what I was doing alone, me making a Cormac McCarthy film, pushing into the new frontier of necrophiliacs.”

He goes on to discuss what he loves about what X-Men franchise producer Simon Kinberg and FOX is doing with the X-Men franchise. 

“What I love about what Simon Kinberg and Fox and the X-Men people have done with Deadpool and Logan — it took a while to get there, maybe 10 years, but they are going to go hard R. And we're going to take, you know, this superhero thing and really just push it into a new genre. Deadpool's almost like an action romantic comedy. And Logan's like a western, you know? So we're working with Simon Kinberg on an X-Men property...It’s in the X-Men universe.”

It's always exciting to hear when filmmakers come out and say they want to do something different within a certain genre and change the game. I'm really curious to see what Franco, Kinberg, and their creative team will come up with for Multiple Man. He's such an interesting Marvel character to play with.

Multiple Man is Jamie Madrox, who, in the comics, conveyed his cloning powers at birth, when a second, identical version of him appeared after the doctor slapped the infant to get him to breathe. His father, a worker at the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Center, moved his family to a remote farm where his son — fitted with a special suit to control his powers designed by X-Men patriarch Professor Xavier — lived quietly until the suit malfunctioned and he began to go crazy. His cloning abilities drove Madrox to have various collisions and collaborations with both the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Jeremy Kramer will oversee it for Fox and the deals are being made now.

After reading what Franco had to say, are you excited to see his take of Multiple Man?