James Franco to Adapt William Faulkner & Cormac McCarthy

By Maryann Yin 

Actor and author James Franco will direct film adaptations of William Faulkner‘s As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy‘s Blood Meridian. The Faulkner film will begin production in summer 2011 and the McCarthy film will follow in 2012.

Franco (pictured, via) explained how he intends to deal with Faulkner’s rotating narrators to Entertainment Weekly: “I don’t believe it’ll feel the same if you divide it as rigidly as the book, like titles that say ‘Cash’ and then you’re with Cash. You can slip into the characters’ heads and give them their inner voice for a while, but it has to be more fluid because movies just work differently than books.”

In addition to publishing a short story collection last year, Franco took on the roles of poet Allen Ginsberg in Howl and memoirist Aron Ralston in 127 Hours. (Via Shelf Awareness)