He’ll next be seen this coming November in the fourth and final film in The Hunger Games franchise, Mockingjay – Part 2, but after that Josh Hutcherson is aiming for a smaller, more intimate indie drama.
Variety reports that Hutcherson will take the lead role in The Long Home, reuniting with its director James Franco. Based on the first novel by author William Gay, the story is as follows:
The Long Home is set in the 1940s in rural Tennessee, where a young man goes to work building a honkytonk for a charismatic and diabolical bootlegger, unaware that the man had murdered his father 10 years prior. He runs into further trouble when he falls for the young woman the bootlegger is grooming to be a prostitute.
On top of directing and producing, Franco will also co-star in the film with Hutcherson, presumably as the above mentioned bootlegger (he recently put a tattooed photo of himself on Instagram which may be him in character). The pair previously worked together when Franco cast him in another adaptation, this time of John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle which has yet to receive a release. Franco’s other directed films include Child of God, As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury.
It’s always nice to see stars of big franchises not just stick to that playing field by choosing something a little bit more difficult and less of easy mass appeal. The Long Home certainly sounds like it ticks those boxes.
Source: Variety