New 'Child of God' trailer: James Franco adapts Cormac McCarthy

By Oliver Gettell

Jan. 21, 2014 9:53 AM PT

Does James Franco ever sleep? In the past year, he’s starred in such diverse films as “Oz the Great and Powerful,” “Spring Breakers” and “This Is the End”; directed art house efforts like “Sal” and “Interior. Leather Bar.”; mentored Gia Coppola in adapting his book “Palo Alto Stories” into a film; been roasted on Comedy Central; mounted an unusual Oscar campaign; and even parodied a Kanye West video for good measure.

Now a new trailer has been released for his directorial effort “Child of God,” adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy. The film stars Scott Haze as a disaffected Tennessee outcast whose life devolves into violence and depravity.

From the looks of the trailer — which begins with the local sheriff (Tim Blake Nelson) asking Haze’s character, “What sort of meanness have you got laid out for next?” — the film is as bleak and violent as one might expect from a film based on a McCarthy book.

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The author’s novels have been adapted to the screen before in “All the Pretty Horses,” “The Road” and, most successfully, “No Country for Old Men,” which won four Oscars, including best picture. McCarthy’s first original script, “The Counselor,” made it to the big screen last year but was a critical and box office dud.

“Child of God” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August, after which Variety film critic Justin Chang wrote, “Franco has emerged with an extremely faithful, suitably raw but still relatively hemmed-in adaptation that compares favorably with his earlier films, yet falls short of achieving a truly galvanizing portrait of social and sexual deviance.”

The film does not yet have a U.S. distributor. Watch the new trailer for “Child of God” below.