No film is ever truly dead as long as there’s enough talent involved. A good example would be James Franco’s “lost” 2015 movie Zeroville, which debuted at TIFF in 2015. Franco directed and starred, joined by the likes of Seth Rogen, Megan Fox, Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Jacki Weaver, Dave Franco, Scott Haze, Craig Robinson, and Joey King. Yeah, a lot of Franco’s buddies, and that is simply too much star power to stay buried for long.
It was announced at Cinemacon that Zeroville will finally get a release courtesy of online distributor myCinema, who plan on dropping it into select theaters this September. The story follows a movie-obsessed seminarian who arrives in Hollywood in 1969, a crucial inflection point for the industry. There’s a reason why Tarantino set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the same point in time.
So what was the deal? Why didn’t Zeroville come out years ago? It was picked up by Alchemy not long after TIFF but a few months later the distributor went bankrupt and the film sat on the shelf due to legal entanglements.
Hopefully we get a trailer for this soon. I’m dying to see Dave Franco who plays Hollywood icon Montgomery Clift, as well as Horatio Sanz as Francis Ford Coppola. [Deadline]
SYNOPSIS: Join VIKAR (James Franco), a wide-eyed innocent in love with the movies, on one wicked trip to the heart of a pulsating, kaleidoscopic Hollywood. Naïve newcomer to the City of Angels, carrying nothing but his “outsider” past and a huge tattoo of Montgomery Clift & Elizabeth Taylor inked on his shaved skull; driven by the allure of cinema to the glittering temptations of Zeroville; a town where anything goes. Encounter the parasites, the punks, the wannabes, the power-brokers and the crazies: meet VIKING MAN (Seth Rogen) – gatekeeper to all the right parties, a cigar-chomping surf hippie; Vikar’s eccentric Hollywood guide. You’ll encounter: foul-mouthed industry veteran DOTTY (Jacki Weaver); the sinister FINANCIER (Danny McBride); sexy femme fatale SOLEDAD (Megan Fox) – a haunted “dame”, the electric charge to trigger Vikar’s breath-taking dive into the captivating world where movies are made. Profoundly magical, funny, unsettling, and gorgeous – a love letter to Los Angeles and provocative satire of America’s fascination with itself, its cult of celebrity; a vision of the death of Old Hollywood.
