James Franco talks chimps for Rise of the Apes

I understand James Franco has the compulsive need to be doing a million things at once, but I think we were all surprised when he picked RISE OF THE APES as one of his upcoming projects. A PLANET OF THE APES sequel (or prequel) seems as good as an idea as the other fairly awful APES movies, and we know how Tim Burton’s recent remake turned out.

Here’s the plot synopsis of this new one, which is in effect the tale of the genesis of talking apes.

“Caesar” is an origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.’

You know, I always just figured we nuked the earth and then evolution started moving in reverse or something, but hey, genetic engeineering works as well.

Franco recently spoke to ScreenJunkies about his role in the film, why he picked it and what it was like working with a mo-cap Andy Serkis as a CGI chimp.

“When I got to do the scenes with Andy Serkis, it was actually really interesting because 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.”

Franco has done the action thing before in Spider-Man, Pineapple Express, The Great Raid and Flyboys. So Apes doesn’t require any badass heroics from him. “I play a nerdy scientist in that so I’m not an action hero at all. I saw 127 Hours as an opportunity to have an unusual acting experience and I honestly felt the same way about Rise of the Apes.”

I like Franco, but there’s nothing about this project to convince me it’s a remotely good idea. I guess with bottomed out expectations, there’s nowhere to go but up?