James Franco to direct Cormac McCarthy’s ultra-violent western Blood Meridian?

By Jake Dee

Posted 16 years ago

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

So James Franco makes a couple of serious pictures and now he’s suddenly ready to write and direct Cormac McCarthy’s bleak masterpiece BLOOD MERIDIAN? Um, okay…

But that’s exactly what’s being reported out of Showbiz 411. Franco, who’s doing the Oscar rounds (both as a nominee and co-host) for his work in 127 HOURS, is now said to be taming with Scott Rudin – one of the best producers in this town – to bring McCarthy’s ultra-violent western to the big screen in 2012. Now, it should be known many people have tried to tackle this epic tome, a work many people believe to be unfilmable. At last glance, Todd Field (LITTLE CHILDREN) was attached to adapt the novel, but he’s currently filming a crime-thriller called CREED OF VIOLENCE, so he’s apparently out of the running.

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In case you’re unfamiliar, here’s what the project is all about:

By the author of the critically acclaimed Border Trilogy, BLOOD MERIDIAN is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting of the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the “Wild Wild West.” Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of The Kid, a 14-year old Tennessean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

F*ckin rad, right? Believe me, I’ve read it…it’s one of the toughest, tersest, most rewarding books I’ve ever had the good pleasure of picking up. Which is why Franco directing worries the hell out of me. Sure he’s acted with some heavyweights, and been around good filmmakers, hell…he’s even directed before. But somehow, I think BLOOD MERIDIAN is a tougher task than FOOL’S GOLD and APE. Besides, the Coens did the best possible Cormac adaptation you can in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN…why even f*ck around?

Know what I’m saying?

Franco’s YOUR HIGHNESS co-star, Zooey Deschanel!

Source: Showbiz 411

About the Author

Jake Dee

Columnist / Reviewer

5,418 Articles Published

Favorite Movies: Horror: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, Black read more Christmas (1974), Friday the 13th (1980), Return of the Living Dead, Halloween (1978), Last House on the Left (1973), way too many to list (in the horror genre alone, not to mention out of genre film) Non-Horror: Stand By Me, Lonely Are the Brave, Lost in Translation, Rushmore, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Sling Blade, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Harold and Maude, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, and on and on and on and mothafu*kin on

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