James Franco is Back on Board THE GAME, A Film About "Pickup Artists"

Years ago, MGM acquired the film rights to Neil Strauss's best-selling book The Game, which chronicled his time spent in the underground society of so-called "pickup artists" — men who "trade the most devastatingly effective techniques ever invented to seduce women." By now, you've likely heard about a lot of these techniques — "negging," for example — and the entire thing is looked at by many as a sort of gross how-to guide for being a skuzzy douchebag.

Four or five years ago, James Franco was attached to star in a film version of The Game, but that project eventually fell apart. Now Deadline reports that he's back and ready to star and produce a new take on the movie, though no director or other cast members have been announced at this time. I'm really hoping Franco takes the approach of making fun of these guys instead of praising them, but the sad thing is that if their lifestyle is glamorized in any way, a lot of people won't realize it's satire or that he's poking fun — look no further than how stock brokers took the wrong lessons from Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street to see this phenomenon in action.

The budget is supposed to be somewhere between $15-20 million and production is being eyed to start in 2017, so we'll keep you posted as it moves forward.