With the amount of projects that James Franco is involved in, I guess you can’t blame him for not even realizing that he has a cameo in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Yes, he was the star of the film’s predecessor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but he was never expected to show up in the highly-anticipated sequel. Especially since his character, Will Rodman, was wiped out by a “virulent plague.” Despite this, Rodman will still have a posthumous cameo, which Franco apparently doesn’t even know about.
“Wait, I have a cameo? I didn’t know that,” said Franco to EW. “You know, I don’t even think they asked my permission to do that.”
There’s no word yet on how Rodman will factor into the story or how big his role will be, but seeing as Franco didn’t even know about it, I imagine that it’s just a very small cameo. The actor obviously didn’t shoot any new scenes for the film, so I’m assuming that they just took some footage from Rise of the Planet of the Apes and threw it into the sequel. Either way, fans of the franchise should definitely get a kick out of seeing Will Rodman show up.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stars Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman and Jason Clarke, and releases on July 11th. Make sure to keep an eye out for Franco’s cameo.
