The actor/director doesn't talk much about his rumored role of Multiple Man, but he does confirm his involvement in the spin-off.
- Nov 28, 2017
AceShowbiz - After rumors that said James Franco would star as Jamie Madrox a.k.a. Multiple Man in an "X-Men" spin-off, the actor/director finally confirmed that he would be joining Fox's X-Men universe. Franco didn't say that he would play the title role, but he said he's attached as producer and set to portray an unknown character.
"I do have a superhero that I am developing. I don't know how much I can say. But I will say I am producing and performing in it. It's early stages. I think probably what I can say is, like anything, there's a need to develop more," Franco told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview.
The actor also added that the spin-off would have a more adult-oriented rating, following the example of "Deadpool" and "Logan". He also mentioned working with Simon Kinberg, a longtime "X-Men" producer and the director of upcoming "X-Men: Dark Phoenix".
"What I love about what Simon Kinberg and Fox and the X-Men people have done with 'Deadpool' and 'Logan'-it took a while to get there, maybe 10 years-but they are going to go hard R. And we're going to take this superhero thing and really just push it into a new genre. So we're working with Simon Kinberg on an X-Men property," said Franco.
Franco is no stranger to the superhero world as well as playing multiple characters at once. The actor was notably known as Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" trilogy. Recently, he portrayed twin brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino on HBO's acclaimed series "The Deuce".
Given his track record of being a writer, director, actor, performance artist, Oscar host and YouTube persona, the role of Multiple Man would be an ideal part for Franco. Multiple Man is a character capable of creating and re-absorbing duplicates of himself. The role enables Franco to experiment and go crazy as much as he can with multiple roles.
Other than "Multiple Man", Fox's upcoming X-Men films include superhero horror film "The New Mutants", released on April 13, 2018 in U.S. theaters, "Deadpool 2" on June 1, 2018, "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" on November 2, 2018, and "Gambit" on February 14, 2019.
