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James Franco’s Role In ‘Alien: Covenant’ Revealed In New Five-Minute Prolog

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 21:35 PST, Mar 5, 2017

James Franco joined the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus some time ago, according to Variety.

The 38-year-old 127 Hours actor joins Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce to star in Alien: Covenant. But what wasn’t known until now was the role that Franco would play in the latest Alien movie.

However, GQ reported that Fox has released a new extended clip, marketed as a prolog, which sheds a lot more light on the plot of the upcoming movie and, in particular, the role that James Franco will play.

Watch the trailer here.

James Franco definitely deserves to be called the busiest actor of this decade. The actor recently revealed he was attached to 19 concurrent film projects, with the sequel to Scott’s Prometheus marking the 20th.

While Fassbender, Rapace, and Pearce have all announced they will reprise their roles in the sequel, James Franco joins the list of newcomers such as Katherine Waterston, Demian Bichir, Billy Crudup, and Danny McBride.

In the film, James Franco will be part of the long journey to a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy. Crew members of a colony ship called Covenant are headed towards the planet and discover what they believe to be an uncharted paradise.

Crew members cannot hide their shock when they find out that the only inhabitant of the planet is the synthetic David, played by Fassbender, who survived the Prometheus expedition. James Franco becomes part of the Alien franchise and joins the sixth film of the franchise created by Scott.

But as GQ noted, the fact that James Franco has been included in the car at such a late stage of production, coupled with his role as the captain of the Covenant, leads to a reasonably fair assumption that his character will be one of the first to die in the film.

The new film is expected to hit theaters on May 19, 2017. With the addition of James Franco to the project, Fox will attempt to beat Prometheus’ record at the worldwide box office, $403.3 million. The 2012 film revolved around events set about 30 years before the events in the franchise 1979 film Alien.

The original Alien film was met with high critical acclaim and was followed by five sequels: in 1986, 1992, 1997, 2012, and now in 2017.

Scott may be excited to have James Franco onboard for his Alien franchise, but the actor’s girlfriends’ parents have never been particularly excited about him, according to ET Online. Franco opened up about the difficulties of winning his girlfriends’ parents’ approval.

At the Los Angeles premiere of Why Him?, in which James Franco portrays a Silicon Valley billionaire who’s trying to get his girlfriend’s father’s approval, the actor revealed to ET Online that he feels his character’s pain.

James Franco revealed that while he had never had problems with fathers, mothers never went easy on him.

“I remember being very young and throwing pebbles at somebody’s window and the mother coming out and treating me like a bum: ‘Get out of here, you scum!'”

James Franco also admitted that he’s not as romantic as he used to be when he was a teenager. The actor revealed that his romantic game has been “pretty bad” lately.

“I think I’m a caring guy, but the grand gestures I’m not great at. I need to put more work into it.”

When asked about his younger brother Dave Franco’s upcoming wedding, James Franco said his brother doesn’t seem stressed out about tying the knot with actress Alison Brie. Even though the Now You See Me 2 actor was expected to walk down the aisle sometime this month, James says his brother is very “casual” about it.

Interestingly, Dave said his brother James Franco wouldn’t be his best man at the wedding. In fact, in his interview with ET Online, Dave said he wasn’t sure if he’s going to have a best man at all. Dave has been pretty private about his upcoming wedding, but it seems that the Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising actor won’t do a lot of the wedding traditions.

[Featured Image by Richard Shotwell/AP Images]

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