The Long Home

Plot

In rural 1940s Tennessee, a young man, Nathan Winer (Hutcherson), lands a job building a "honky-tonk" bar for a charismatic, scheming bootlegger, unaware that the man had murdered his father ten years earlier.

Cast

Pre-production

James Franco would direct, produce (through Rabbit Bandini Productions), and star in the film adaption of the William Gay novel of the same name. Robert Halmi Jr. and Jim Reeve would be executive producers.

The Long Home was offered up to $288,355 in Ohio Film Tax Credits.

Casting

Franco posted on Instagram a list of The Long Home cast which included Josh Hutcherson, Timothy Hutton, Keegan Allen, Ashley Greene, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Parrack, and Scott Haze.

Tim Blake Nelson collaborated with Franco for the seventh time as Hovington, a bootlegging patriarch. Josh Hutcherson starred as Nathan Winer. Timothy Hutton and Courtney Love were cast. Giancarlo Esposito played William Tell Oliver, "a Southern salt-of-the-earth man with a colorful, checkered life spent entirely within the confines of the country". Several other actors signed on to the cast: Ashton Kutcher, Josh Hartnett, Zoe Levin (as Amber Rose), Analeigh Tipton, Scott Haze, and Robin Lord Taylor.

Filming

The film was shot in Eaton, Ohio, Hamilton, Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Principal photography began on May 1, 2015 in Hamilton. This coincided with filming of another Franco film, Goat, which was shot "pretty much simultaneously". Filming began in Eaton on May 17. Production on the film wrapped on May 23, 2015, with filming lasting 23 days.

Release

The Long Home is tentatively expected to be released in 2017.