The Disaster Artist

James Franco plays Tommy Wiseau in this hilarious and touching comedy about the making of the cult classic film ‘The Room.’

The Disaster Artist premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last night (we’ll have a full review later), and while you won’t be able to see James Franco’s ode to mercurial filmmaker Tommy Wiseau until December, you can watch this great new trailer courtesy of A24. The star-studded film (featuring pretty much every actor you expect to see in a movie with Franco and Seth Rogen) already has a lot of positive buzz, and although it probably won’t earn any Oscars (well, maybe?), its awards season release date doesn’t feel all that strange.

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One of the biggest hits at this year’s SXSW Film Festival was also one of the most pleasant surprises: The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s new film based on Greg Sestero’s book of the same name, which recounts the making of 2003’s The Room. In addition to directing, Franco stars in the film as Tommy Wiseau, the eccentric (to say the least) filmmaker behind the so-bad-it-might-be-genius cult favorite. While many have praised The Disaster Artist as a weirdly touching love letter to filmmaking, there’s arguably only one opinion that really matters: That of Wiseau himself.

See how closely Franco’s performance from ‘The Disaster Artist’ trailer matches the original one from ‘The Room.’

“James Franco doing a movie about the creation of legendary disasterpiece The Room” was a tantalizing prospect when first announced, either a brilliant turn for his career-spanning preoccupation with artifice in showbiz or another insufferable bout of navel-gazing. The first trailer for the comedy due December 1 (before going wide on December 8) isn’t really either, landing somewhere closer to Hail, Caesar! in its farcical send-up of filmmaking frustration. 2017 has gotten its “Would that it t’were so simple,” now say it with me: “I did not hit her, it’s not true, it’s bullsh*t, I did not hit her, I did not. Oh hi, Mark.”

James and Dave Franco joining forces to turn one of the wildest books about one of the wildest movie shoots into a movie of its own sounded too good (or too weird) to be true when The Disaster Artist was first announced, but they did it, and A24 snatched it up after it debuted at SXSW this year, and the first teaser is on its way tomorrow. But before all that, A24 debuted a shiny new poster for the movie, which sees James Franco going full Wiseau in a recording studio.

The world has come one step closer to bearing witness to the full scope of James Franco’s artistic vision. As the latest component of his ongoing interrogation of celebrity, performance, artifice, and vague pseudo-intellectualism, he’s adapted The Disaster Artist, actor Greg Sestero’s true account of his time behind the scenes of the calamitous production of The Room. Famed as one of the most bafflingly incompetent movies of all time, the real weirdness came off set, where director/writer/financier/star/madman Tommy Wiseau (played by Franco in the movie) engaged Sestero in a bizarre, homoerotically charged rivalry. Which makes the fact that Franco’s brother Dave will play Sestero just that much stranger.

Alright, SXSW, let’s do this. With just weeks to go before the start of this year’s fest, SXSW has announced even more additions to their 2017 lineup, including the world premiere of James Franco’s The Disaster Artist — the actor / writer / director’s new film based on the making of Tommy Wiseau’s totally bonkers cult favorite The Room. The programming team has also announced this year’s Midnighters lineup, featuring several intriguing genre films to play in the late-night slot (aka peak mind-melting hour).