EXCLUSIVE: James Franco reveals that he has a role in a “big studio movie,” the first blockbuster, he tells Deadline, he’s appeared in for close to a decade.

Franco says that the film’s already shot but “it won’t be ready for this summer, but my guess is it will be end of this year or spring-summer 2027.”

The actor wasn’t able to reveal more but he was excited to discuss it because by his reckoning The Disaster Artist, released in 2017, was the last production that he would class as a studio picture. “That was New Line and then they let us sell it to A24,” Franco explains.

The actor spoke to us at the official festival dinner at the Palm Beach which he attended with his partner, filmmaker Izabel Pakzad.

Franco appeared in a string of hot properties such as 127 Hours and Pineapple Express, but studio features have been light on the ground since the 2021 settlement of a legal case brought against him by former acting students who accused him of sexual misconduct.

But the actor says he hasn’t been hiding away outta sight. For instance, this is the fourth year back-to-back that he’s had films in the Cannes market.

This year he has been involved with the thriller Foster, in which he stars — he’s also a producer. The film, directed by Timothy Woodward Jr., had a market screening on Monday.

He says he is particularly thrilled that it was shot in Los Angeles “which is unusual these days,” adding that “it’s kinda like, in the best sense of the genre, like a fun, grind-house -style action thing …”

The movie’s set in the 1980s and Franco plays the title character, a veteran who’s backed into a compromising situation upon his return home to the U.S.

He  helped rewrite it and notes that he was inspired by Robert Stones book Dog Soldiers, a Vietnam-War era novel about Americans who get involved in narcotics in Vietnam “and then come back [to the USA] and then are making a living selling these drugs. I kind of inspired the character on that … except he didn’t want to do it. He’d had a real drug problem and then gets in with the wrong people and so then to pay it off he starts transporting drugs. Now he wants to get out. He’s clean but he’s still in debt and he has to do certain jobs that he doesn’t want to do.”

Franco adamantly refuted suggestions that he’s been hiding away and coming to Cannes was a reemergence for him. “It’s not true I’ve been hiding out, I’ve been here the last three or four years running, selling things and they treat me well and I get to go and see great movies.”

Does he feel that he’s been treated unfairly in any way?

He brings on that high wattage smile of his, shrugs his shoulders and says, “I don’t know. What am I going to do? I just go forward and try to live a positive life.”

He repeats his “what am I going to do,” mantra. “You know what I mean? Honestly, like, I just try to be the best person I can be… I think I was put on this planet to make movies. I try to make movies the best I can and it’s kinda like all I can do.”

He plans to catch as many films as possible while in Cannes. 

Diego Luna’s film Ashes and Jordan Firstman’s super Club Kid are on his list. 

Electric Kiss

During the Opening Night premiere of Pierre Salvadori’s cute romantic film The Electric Kiss, starring Anaïs Demoustier, Pio Marmaï, Gilles Lellouche and Visalia Pons, the filmmaker says that he started to hear something. “It was awful.”

Whatever it was – at that point we none of us knew – I could hear it too. “I could hear this beep-beep and it went on for forty-five minutes, and I started to cry because nobody could stop it,” Salvadori explains.

Then they realized, he continues, “that it was a cable that was not unplugged from the direct live TV broadcast before.”

Salvadori was especially exercised because “when you open in Cannes you have to open everywhere in France at the same time, so this was a rush and I was so afraid that this noise was maybe on the soundtrack of the film on every print! It was the most agonizing time because I just didn’t know what it was. For me it destroyed everything because I just couldn’t get back into the movie while this disaster was occurring and I couldn’t move from my seat. I was frozen while this noise was happening. I didn’t know if I would have to get up and stop the film. There were 952 prints across France,“ he says.

“Somebody else got up and was looking for the source of the noise from minute one,” Salvadori states.

In fact, at one point I got up to go check on the many devices about my person, in case it was moi! 

I spotted Thierry Fremaux in the lobby, on his cell attempting to get to the bottom of the noisy interruption.

Some critics gave the movie a thumbs down, but, strangely enough, I liked it. One’s not always lucky with Opening Night. I mention to the director and Demoustier that I’ve had to endure some right old Opening Night stinkers.

Salvadori asks what “a stinker” means.  

Demoustier holds her nose and mimes gagging. The director understands immediately.

‘Club Kid’ & “Undles”

During the Palm Beach dinner, I recognize Jordan Firstman because I’d had a sneak showing of his film Club Kid which he wrote, stars in and directs. It’s in Un Certain Regard and I’m not going to say too much about it because when I saw it all I knew was the title, nothing else. 

Just know that it’s set in New York, and a little bit was shot in London. There’s a young British kid in it by the name of Reggie Absolom and he’s great. The scenes with Firstman and Absolom, floored me because a few of them are incredibly moving, but not cloyingly so. 

Part of the movie is set in New York’s downtown clubland and Firstman uses all kinds of lingo to describe various narcotics. “I say it’s a foreign language film because none of the words you’ve heard before,” Firstman jokes. ”Everything is an ‘undle,’ because it comes from when you would buy a large sum of coke, it would be in a bundle,” he says helpfully.

At the film’s after-party there will be tee-shirts that are a tad outrageous, but also quite hilarious. One reads: ‘I Boofed At Cannes. And All I Got Was This Lousy Shirt.’ 

I cannot bring myself to repeat Firstman’s explanation for the term, Boofed. But I can never un-know it.

However, I shall be seeing Kid Club again here, underneath all the undle there’s something very special going on.

Cannes Is Where It All Begins

Firstman partied at my table – number 19- with several other guests including Maika Monroe who’s in Zachary Wigan’s gothic horror Victorian Psycho, showing in Un Certain Regard.

Monroe’s known as the “scream Queen” thanks to roles in It Follows, which debuted here at Cannes twelve years ago. Monroe says that she’s preparing to shoot the sequel, They Follow, where she’ll reprise the lead role of Jay Height. 

Monroe rocked up with her partner Dalton Gomez who boasts movie star good looks, but happily works in the real estate world.

We were like the hang-out kids. At one point, Ira Sachs, in competition with The Man I Love, wandered over for a visit and stayed quite a while, as did many others.

Juror Stellan Skarsgård was enjoying the sea bass with truffles. My side of the room hadn’t been served its first course. The Swedish star was hanging out with fellow panelist Paul Laverty.

Skarsgård was here last year with Joachim Trier’s Oscar-winning Sentimental Value, and his son Alexander Skarsgård was also at the festival with Harry Lighton’s Pillion. “One night we went to six parties in a row,” the Oscar and BAFTA-nominated actor discloses.

Clearly, he takes his deliberating duties seriously, because he says, “I won’t be doing that this time. It’s not appropriate in this situation,” as he and Laverty go over their schedules.

Another juror, Isaacs De Bankolé, was deep in conversation with friends. Demi Moore, Chloé Zhao and Park Chan-work had already scooted off into the night and Ruth Negga announced that she was about to “skedaddle,” but before she went we chatted for a minute about Jeff Nichols’ splendid film Loving which premiered at Cannes a decade ago. After that she spent the next nine months promoting it all the way into awards season — and to the Oscars.

So, yeah, Cannes is where it all begins.   .