James Franco’s ‘As I Lay Dying’ [video]

James Franco’s film adaptation of “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner will be in the “Un Certain Regard” competition with 17 other films at Cannes. The official trailer, full of family feuding, sweetness, violence and rage, is above.

Faulkner is the Nobel-prize-winning novelist whose work has remained some of the most significant American literature of the 20th century. He published “As I Lay Dying,” the third of his novels set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, in 1930.

Franco is the ambitious actor, writer and director who has played goofballs and poets, burnouts and bad guys. At 35, he has an extraordinarily long list of credits -- which, unlike even his most prolific contemporaries, includes grad school.

Will Franco’s Faulkner be a success? French viewers get to decide first. An American release date has not yet been announced.

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