The buzzy new musical movie Wicked will finally bring that 2003 Broadway show to the big screen. While this Jon M. Chu directorial effort will be the first motion picture to feature “Defying Gravity,” it’s another in a long line of big-screen adaptations of pre-existing musicals. With the rare La La Land or The Greatest Showman exceptions, major studios want to make musical movies based on familiar Broadway shows. This, on paper, mitigates some of the risk of making a movie in a genre that doesn’t have universal appeal. Not everybody adores musicals, but most people like Wicked or Into the Woods.
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At the dawn of the 2010s, deeply unique writer/director Charlie Kaufman tried to mount an original musical movie starring Jack Black and Nicolas Cage (among many others) that would’ve upended so many industry standards for musical films. This proposed project was Frank or Francis and it’s endured as one of the great unmade films of modern cinema.
What Was Frank or Francis?
Charlie Kaufman movies aren’t just odd, they’re downright bizarre. That was already true when he was just a screenwriter on movies other people directed like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. When he started directing his own works with 2009’s Synecdoche, New York, his visuals became even more outlandish while his introspective melancholy tendencies also went into overdrive. Kaufman’s movies provide visuals you won’t see anywhere else to explore the deep insecurities existing within so many human beings.
To follow up Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman was planning to make the musical movie Frank or Francis, which would’ve functioned as a piece of showbiz satire. Specifically, the film would’ve been about a filmmaker (named Frank) getting into a contentious relationship with movie blogger Francis. “There’s a lot in there about the internet and anger: cultural, societal and individual anger,” Kaufman explained to The Playlist in September 2011. “And isolation in this particular age we live in. And competition: it’s about the idea of people in this world wanting to be seen.”
In some ways, Kaufman’s concept for Frank or Francis already sounds a bit dated. The term “blogger” hasn’t really existed since 2015, for one thing. Kaufman’s vision of filmmaker/internet nerd relationships is rooted in an era of Harry Knowles and Uwe Boll wanting to box critics of his movies. That’s a far cry from our modern world of online film culture driven by Letterboxd, influencers, and YouTube ragebait channels. On the other hand, his emphasis on “isolation” in the internet age sounds just as relevant as ever.
In a modern world grappling with things like “the male loneliness epidemic,” Kaufman sounds, conceptually, spot-on in targeting how the Internet provides so many tools yet can create more barriers than connections between people. Even more chillingly prescient in the film is an animatronic head played by Kevin Kline (one of his two proposed roles in the film) designed to generate new movie ideas for studios. That’s no longer satire, but rather a chilling reflection of reality as so many movie studios put money behind artist-unfriendly forces like generative AI. As for the rest of the star-studded cast, Steve Carell was set to play Frank while Black would’ve inhabited the role of Francis. Cage, meanwhile, would perform as a big name fictional actor unable to escape being typecast.
Oh, and singing, they would all be singing.
Why Didn’t Frank or Francis Happen?
If Frank or Francis had gotten off the ground, it’s impossible to tell whether or not it would’ve been the next Barton Fink or An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn in the pantheon of showbiz satires. However, audiences never got to develop an impression of this original musical. Frank or Francis was postponed in June 2012 despite assembling a star-studded cast and being ready to roll before cameras. Difficulty in securing financing led to its demise. Not even big names like Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, and Steve Carrel could ensure that this risky feature saw the light of day.
While promoting his second directorial effort, Anomalisa, Kaufman revealed that he would still be interested in getting Frank or Francis off the ground. Financing and seeing if he could get his dream cast were the biggest obstacles at the time. Nearly a decade later, no further updates have emerged on Frank or Francis. Given how radically the Hollywood landscape has changed since the film was first proposed, it would require extensive changes just to feel remotely relevant to 2024 moviegoers.
Frank or Francis faced the kinds of enormous hurdles facing off against any proposed original musical in Hollywood. Broadway musical movie adaptations are quite common on the big screen. Original musicals, even ones starring some of the biggest movie stars on the planet, have a tough time even getting made, let alone seen.