James Franco's earning some Oscar buzz for his performance in 127 Hours, the true story of a mountain climber who was trapped for five days after a boulder crashed down and pinned his arm. Unable to move and with no water left, Aron Ralston had to take extreme action and amputate his arm. Franco stars as Ralston in the Fox Searchlight drama directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), and his performance could lead to his first Oscar nomination.While out promoting that film, Franco was - of course - asked about another project he has in the works, the prequel to the Planet of the Apes franchise: Rise of the Apes (which may not be its final title).
"I play a nerdy scientist in that so I'm not an action hero at all," explained Franco. "I saw 127 Hours as an opportunity to have an unusual acting experience and I honestly felt the same way about Planet of the Apes where when I first heard about it I thought, 'Well, hmm, I don't know. Those masks have cult value but...' And then I found out that that's not how they're doing it, that it's actually all of Peter Jackson's Weta people doing CG and that I'll be working with Andy Serkis who played Gollum, and it was the DP from Lord of the Rings, Andrew Lesnie. I was such a big fan of those movies and I am interested in new ways of performing and new ways of filmmaking, so I thought why not? I had this opportunity [to] try it out."
"It was actually, when I got to do the scenes with Andy Serkis, it was actually really interesting because Danny [Boyle] and I have actually talked about this too, he plays a chimpanzee, a real chimpanzee. There's no way we would ever get scenes that we did with a real chimpanzee. Because Andy's so good at that behavior so it's like acting opposite a real chimpanzee with great acting instincts. It was cool. It was new, new for me."
Rise of the Apes is directed by Rupert Wyatt and is set in modern day San Francisco. Described as a "a reality-based cautionary tale," Rise of the Apes tells the story of how "man's own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy."
Rise of the Apes monkeys around in theaters beginning June 24, 2011.
(Photo by Samir Hussein / Getty Images)
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