While Dave Franco has taken on much more comedic and mainstream roles than his brother, James Franco, it's pretty easy to tell that the two are brothers. They share the same brown eyes, brown hair, and cheekbones, and they both have a mischievous look in their eyes at all times.
James Franco has been prolific over the past decade but the same can't necessarily be said of his famous sibling. Dave Franco and wife Alison Brie penned a rom-com in just two weeks but the actor hasn't had any major starring roles in a movie in a while. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that in the past few years, his brother has been accused of sexual misconduct, and Dave hasn't had that many high-profile film parts. Let's take a look at whether these two things could be related.
The James Franco Controversy
James Franco and Seth Rogen are good friends and the two have starred in some projects together, from TV show Freaks and Geeks to the movie The Pineapple Express. But the press surrounding James Franco hasn't been positive in recent years as he has been part of a sexual misconduct scandal.
According to BBC.co.uk, two of James Franco's students at his film school, Toni Gaal and Sarah Tither-Kaplan, sued him in 2017. They said that while they were at Studio 4, he wanted to "create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education."
As for his brother Dave Franco, he hasn't had a ton of high-profile roles in recent years, but he has definitely worked pretty steadily. In 2007, he had a part in Superbad. In 2010, he was in Charlie St. Cloud and Greenberg, and he played Mark in Fright Night in 2011. After that point, he had a steady stream of parts: Eric in 21 Jump Street (2012), Perry in Warm Bodies (2013), Pete in Neighbors (2014) and the same character in the sequel Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2015). He also starred in a few episodes of the Netflix show Easy from 2016 to 2019.
Marriage And A Movie
Perhaps Dave Franco hasn't been acting that much because of two reasons: he recently got married, and he also recently made his own movie. Maybe he wants to focus on his own projects from now on and he wants to move beyond just acting.
Alison Brie and Dave Franco tied the knot in March 2017 and according to Brides.com, he said of their wedding day, "It was great, it was really special. It was intimate, and it was really fun."
Dave has also been busy working on his film The Rental. He and Joe Swanberg, wrote the film and Dave also directed it, the first time that he has stepped into that role. In an interview with Indirewire.com, the actor talked about why he was drawn to the storyline. He said, "I was inspired by my own paranoia about the concept of home-sharing, and thinking about how the country is as divided as it’s ever been, and no one trusts each other, yet we trust living in the home of a stranger because of a few positive reviews online."
Dave Franco also said that although his wife is in the movie, he chose to let another actor star opposite her. He explained, "When I did decide to direct it, I made a major choice to just focus on my responsibility behind the camera."
As for the relationship between the brothers, it seems like they have enjoyed working together in the past. Dave was in The Disaster Artist with his brother, and according to Cinemablend.com, he got some great filmmaking lessons from that movie.
He said, "Thinking about The Disaster Artist specifically. I mean with my brother and Seth Rogen and his crew, what I took from that film and what I’ll do forever is they really set a comfortable environment on set. Where they encourage every single person to voice their opinion if they feel it’ll help the film in any way. So essentially there’s no egos." He explained that this has helped his most recent project and said, "I definitely brought that over to The Rental."
It's interesting to watch a star's career evolve, and in the case of Dave Franco, it seems like he has wanted to put his creative energy into directing his first film, the horror movie The Rental. Fans can keep an eye out for any future movies from the actor as it seems like this might be a creative path that he wants to go down.
