Quite how he’ll manage to fit it in with all the thousands of other projects he’s juggling is anyone’s guess, but James Franco is now in early talks to star in Oz The Great And Powerful, after Robert Downey Jr. bailed a couple of weeks ago and Johnny Depp passed on the role as well.
While it was known director Sam Raimi and Disney were interested in Depp, it wasn’t clear whether he’d come on board, as it would have inevitably meant pushing back some long-standing projects, including The Lone Ranger, which has already been repeatedly delayed as the likes of Pirates 4 took precedence. Now he’s officially passed on the project.
Franco may seem a slightly odd choice to play an illusionist who ends up in Oz and takes on the might of two evil witches (eventually becoming the wizard himself), but it does appear his on-screen persona is different to how he’s seen off-screen, and it appears Raimi wants to channel that onto the screen – presumably having seen his abilities on the set of the Spider-man movies. There’s little doubt Franco likes to challenge himself and go for movies and projects that are unlike anything he’s done before, and while very mainstream, this is a larger-than-life role that’s likely to take him out of his comfort zone (as well as offering a far better payday that most of the vast range of projects he’s been linked to recently).
However it’s very early stages yet and lots of issues need to be ironed out before any dealmaking with Franco can begin, but the hope is that everything will align. One of the big stumbling blocks is likely to be timing. Franco is ridiculously busy, and with Oz having no starting date set yet, it’s difficult to know whether he’ll be prepared make a commitment when it could threaten many of the other things he’s working on. (Source: THR)