They're Going to Assassinate a Pretty Huge Target

So, Seth Rogen and James Franco are going to assassinate Kim Jong-un. No, not really. That's just the premise of their upcoming movie The Interview as stated in the trailer for the film. It comes from the minds of the people who brought us Neighbors and This is the End, which gives you a good idea of just how seriously to take this movie and the expectation of a red band trailer in our immediate future. If Seth Rogen and James Franco seem like the last two people who should be getting anywhere near the subject of North Korea or its supreme leader, then that's probably exactly why they're doing the movie.

The extended premise of The Interview paints it as an action-comedy starring James Franco as Dave Skylark and Seth Rogen as producer Aaron Rapoport. They run a celebrity gossip television show called "Skylark Tonight", of which Kim Jong-un turns out to be a fan. Dave and Aaron land an interview with him to become Real Journalists, but their plans change when the CIA recruits them to assassinate Kim Jong-un instead.

Is it going to be raunchy, insensitive, and politically incorrect? Probably. Is it going to be hilariously funny and surprisingly sweet? Also probably. After all, Neighbors was painted as a straight up, borderline pornographic comedy, but it turned out to paint a fair portrait of both sides of the frat vs. family conflict as not being wholly in the right and had a lot of genuine heart and emotional depth in the characters. The Interview looks like it has the potential to be as much a celebration of Korean culture as it will be a parody of it — well, as much of a celebration as you can be while starring two white men.

Plus, it has James Bond-esque weaponry, Lizzie Kaplan, and Randall Park, an Korean-American actor, portraying Kim Jong-un. Already that makes it a lot better than one would expect from a cultural comedy. Sure, James Franco is the last person any of us want to see after we've witnessed him trying to pick up a teenager on the Internet and writing a classless short story about not sleeping with Lindsay Lohan for a magazine, but maybe this movie will remind us why we used to love him on the screen if not off.

Watch the trailer below.

Image: Sony; evangoldberg/Twitter