Principal photography has commenced today in Georgia on James Franco’s IN DUBIOUS BATTLE and five new actors have also signed on for the James Franco-directed project.
We already knew that Selena Gomez, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, Bryan Cranston, Nat Wolff, John Savage and Sam Shepherd were on board the much anticipated production and now the newest actors rounding out the cast are Josh Hutcherson (THE HUNGER GAMES), Zach Braff (GARDEN STATE), Analeigh Tipton (CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE) Ashley Greene (TWILIGHT) and Ahna O’Reilly (THE HELP).
AMBI Group, the movie development, finance, production and distribution group owned and run by Andrea Iervolino and Lady Monika Bacardi, is financing the film and producing with Rabbit Bandini Productions and That’s Hollywood Pictures Production.Â
The film is based on Steinbeck’s gritty, realist style novel In Dubious Battle, which portrays the struggle between labor and capital in 1930s America as close to all out warfare and writer Matt Rager (AS I LAY DYING) has adapted the feature screenplay based on the novel.
Published in 1936, In Dubious Battle is considered the first major work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Set in a fictionalized valley in California, the story explores themes Steinbeck continued to develop: group behaviour, social injustice, man’s inhumanity to man— all themes which continue to be relevant today. A labor conflict between migrant apple pickers and the local growers’ association is the backdrop against which Jim Nolan (Franco) becomes involved in the labor movement and rapidly matures as he learns what it means to do organizational fieldwork.
With an interesting mix of actors involved in this film we are looking forward to the first glimpses from this film.
