King Cobra 2

While he’s currently shooting David Simon’s new HBO series The Deuce, which looks at the porn industry in the 1970s and ’80s in New York City, James Franco has another production which explores a more modern look at the industry. King Cobra, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, follows Franco and Christian Slater as rival gay porn producers who fight over a burgeoning star. Ahead of a release next month, IFC Midnight has now released the first trailer.

We said in our review, “Throw Boogie Nights, Shooting Porn, Downloading Nancy, and Party Monster in a blender, add some cocaine, a scope of whey protein and squirt of lube and you’ve got the unexpectedly fun King Cobra. Inspired by a true story, the sophomore feature from writer-director Justin Kelly is a darkly comic tale set in the wake of Katrina, a piece of background information that informs the lack of smart phones, high-speed mobile data, and prevalence of primitive HD video in an otherwise timeless tale of creepy older men taking advantage of younger objects of desire.”

Check out the trailer below for the film also starring Garrett Clayton, Keegan Allen, Alicia Silverstone, and Molly Ringwald.

Based on a stranger-than-fiction true story, King Cobra is a deliciously dark, twisted plunge into the behind-the-scenes world of the pornography industry. It’s 2006, YouTube is in its infancy, and internet porn is still behind a paywall. Taking the stage name Brent Corrigan, a fresh-faced, wannabe adult video performer (Garrett Clayton) is molded into a star by Stephen (Christian Slater), a closeted gay porn mogul who runs the skin flick empire Cobra Video from his seemingly ordinary suburban home. But as Brent’s rise and demands for more money put him at odds with his boss, he also attracts the attention of a rival producer (James Franco) and his unstable lover (Keegan Allen) who will stop at nothing to squash Cobra Video and steal its number one star. Co-starring Alicia Silverstone and Molly Ringwald, King Cobra is part delirious, tabloid-shocker satire, part American tragedy.

King Cobra hits VOD and theaters on October 21.

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