EXCLUSIVE: First Look at James Franco Revision of Tori Spelling's 'Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?' as Vampir
Never one to be put in a box, James Franco is again pushing
the limits of expectation with a remake of Mother,
May I Sleep With Danger? -- andET
has your exclusive first look!
The new film, which premieres on Lifetime on June 18,
reunites Tori Spelling and Ivan Sergei from the original 1996 TV movie but
tells a very different story. “James has totally put his own spin on it, which
is why they brought along James Franco, of course,” Spelling tells ET. “It’s
this cool, edgy, vampire lesbian movie.”
“I wanted to change things a little bit,” Franco says in a
behind-the-scenes interview from the set.
MORE: How James Franco Uses His Famous Friends to Make Hollywood Movies His Way
The original saw Laurel (Spelling) trying to distance
herself from her seemingly perfect boyfriend (Sergei), who didn’t understand
boundaries. In Franco’s revision, Spelling plays Julie, the mother to Leah (played by Vincent
D'Onofrio’s daughter, Leila George), who brings home girlfriend Pearl (The Leftovers’ Emily Meade) much to her
parents' surprise.
“Julie tries to embrace the idea of Leah’s new love
interest,” Lifetime’s official log line reads, “but she can’t shake the feeling
that something is very wrong.” What’s wrong is that Pearl is a vampire, adding
a whole new meaning to “sleeping with danger.”
“That makes vampires metaphorically sexual creatures,” Sergei, who plays a professor at the college where Leah is a theater major, jokes.
While Spelling tells ET that she thought it was a prank at first (“It was the craziest thing. I thought I was being Punk’d. I’m serious!”), Franco revealed at the Television Critics Association in January that the remake was a very serious one. “[The idea] came out of Will Ferrell having done A Deadly Adoption,” Franco said. “Will told me that he was actually inspired by my going on General Hospital when he did that.”
A Deadly Adoption saw Ferrell and Kristen Wiig playing a strained married couple who decide to adopt an unwanted child. The decision proves to be a dangerous one as their relationship is torn apart by the mother-to-be of their adopted child.
“Then Lifetime came to me and [asked if I would] like to recreate one of their movies like Will did,” Franco explained. “I said yes, as long as I could change it a bit. It has some similar elements of the original but it’s completely revamped… You’ll have a very non-Lifetime movie on Lifetime.”
It’s certainly disrupting the norms of what Lifetime does, but as Franco told ET in April, that’s what he loves to do.
--Additional reporting from Deidre Behar