If you’re an emerging director, chances are you’ll hear a word of encouragement from Dave Franco. 

Jeremy Saulnier certainly did after the actor saw the filmmaker’s breakout self- and crowd-funded revenge thriller, Blue Ruin (2013), starring his childhood best friend Macon Blair. When Blair himself took a crack at the director’s chair a few years later, Franco reached out to compliment his Sundance-winning I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. The Palo Alto native admits his generosity is partly motivated by a desire to get on talented directors’ radars for future roles, but it’s mainly about softening the industry’s competitiveness.

“We don’t tell each other enough how much we enjoy each other’s work. There’s such a competitive spirit within the industry that I just want to put out some good vibes, especially if it’s someone’s first time putting out a movie,” Franco tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Idiots’ Aug. 28 theatrical release. “So I guess I play the long game sometimes, but it doesn’t normally lead to collaboration. More often than not, it has led to friendship.”

In Blair’s case, Franco’s overture in 2017 led to both friendship and eventual collaboration. The writer-director quickly returned the favor by sending Franco a script to read called The Shitheads. Franco soon realized, however, that he was too young to play the then-40-something Mark Southard, an aging slacker who, along with another underachiever named Davis Hench, winds up transporting a reprehensible trust-fund teen named Sheridan to rehab.

The project would nearly go in 2017 and 2018 with a couple different combinations of actors, particularly Luke Wilson and Tracy Morgan, but then its financing came crashing down, shelving the picture until Franco wrote another one of his patented emails around 2024. At this point, he’d not only aged into the role of Mark, but he’d also directed and/or produced a number of projects to where he could be equally beneficial behind the camera. 

“I said, ‘No pressure, but I’m here. If I can help in any way as a producer, I’d love to come in and help find the money,’” Franco recalls. “So I’ve basically been stalking Macon for the past ten years in trying to collaborate with him.”

The Shitheads did indeed find funding in 2025 en route to a fall shoot in Georgia. Franco even proved instrumental on the casting side of things by recommending O’Shea Jackson Jr. as Davis. The two actors had previously worked together on a series for the short-lived short-form platform, Quibi. And when it came time to find the despicable teenage influencer named Sheridan, Franco suggested Mason Thames from their 2025 film Regretting You. 

Before being retitled to Idiots, the film’s original title of The Shitheads wasn’t just a reference to Mark and Davis’ gross incompetence at life. It also had to do with the film’s signature scene in which Sheridan spikes his handlers’ generic colas, causing Mark to produce a geyser of diarrhea in their motel room.

“It’s a top-three poo scene in cinematic history. It’s up there with Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber,” Franco states. “I remember calling my wife [Alison Brie] after that day and telling her I just did the craziest thing I’ve ever done on camera, which is saying a lot because I’ve done so many fucked-up things on camera. But I hold to that statement, and I’m pretty confident that it’s a violent moment people will talk about afterward.”

The pic premiered at 2026’s Sundance Film Festival before securing theatrical distribution from IFC the following month. The deal was not contingent on a title change, but Team Shitheads, once they learned about the realities of promotion, realized that they’d only be making it harder for their small throwback comedy to gain traction. Thus, they landed on Idiots to keep the tontal spirit of the original intact. 

All in all, Franco hopes Idiots can do its part to bring back a brand of comedy that has largely disappeared from multiplexes. 

“Idiots is meant to be a throwback comedy. It hearkens back to comedies from the early 2000s: The Hangover, Superbad, Pineapple Express, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” Franco says. “There are other moments besides the diarrhea scene that’ll shock audiences. I have personally missed these types of comedies. So I hope people check it out because, for us to be able to make more comedies again, people need to see the rare ones that do get made.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Franco also discusses his future as a director, before updating his status on 24 Jump Street and Now You See Me 4.

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You don’t look like Alison Brie. (Franco is using his wife’s Zoom account.)

I like to get people’s hopes up and then slash them when I finally appear on screen.

You look more like the French Dip-hating Dave Franco.

(Laughs.) Wow, you’ve done your research.

I keep tabs on the situation. So a script called The Shitheads shows up in your inbox one day. It’s from Macon Blair of Blue Ruin fame. Were you already familiar with the work he and Jeremy Saulnier have done together? 

Big time. I re-watch Blue Ruin every single year. It’s probably the movie I recommend to people more than any other. It was made for less than half a million dollars, and it’s a perfect, taut thriller. So that was my introduction to Macon as an actor. 

Then I saw the first movie he wrote and directed, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, and that’s when I reached out to Macon to say, “I love your shit. I will do anything with you.” This was nearly 10 years ago now [in 2017], and at the time, he sent me the script for The Shitheads. But I was too young to play the Mark role that I ultimately played. So it wasn’t meant to be, and we amicably parted ways 

Eight years then passed, and I reached out to him again to say, “Hey man, I’m old now. Let’s go! Whatever happened to that project?” Then he told me that it almost went, but it fell apart. So I said, “No pressure, but I’m here. If I can help in any way as a producer, I’d love to come in and help find the money.” And he said, “Alright, let’s give it a shot.” So I’ve basically been stalking Macon for the past ten years in trying to collaborate with him.

Do you often play the long game?

If I see a movie that I love, especially by a first-time director, I will reach out to them and let them know how much I love their work. Part of that is obviously wanting to work with them myself, but another part is that we don’t tell each other enough how much we enjoy each other’s work. There’s such a competitive spirit within the industry that I just want to put out some good vibes, especially if it’s someone’s first time putting out a movie. I just want to send them some love. So I guess I play the long game sometimes, but it doesn’t normally lead to collaboration. More often than not, it has led to friendship. I’ll meet up with people every once in a while to talk film, and one of those people is Jeremy Saulnier. I reached out to him about Blue Ruin.

As you mentioned, the Shitheads script has had quite a history the last 13 years. It once had Luke Wilson and Tracy Morgan attached to it in 2017. Macon did tell me that he aged the piece down a little bit because you and O’Shea Jackson Jr. are still younger than that combo would’ve been at the time. But how noticeable were those changes from your perspective?

If I’m being honest, not a ton changed. It was more just practicalities like, “Hey, we don’t have enough time or money to do some set piece, so we had to cut it.” But for the most part, the script has remained untouched, which speaks to just how timeless this story is and how iconic these characters are. It stood the test of time, and there weren’t a bunch of rewrites just to make it more modern.

You’ve always been able to play younger, and I still think you can play younger. Has that been a blessing for the most part? Or has it worked against you like it originally did with The Shitheads in 2017? 

It’s a tough question to answer. I’m sure it’s gone both ways where it’s benefited me in certain circumstances and then been detrimental in others. But for this film, I did want to look slightly older than I typically do. I did my absolute best to grow out my facial hair, and it came in nice and scraggly. I learned that I can grow a pretty strong goatee, but the sides are nasty and patchy. So it worked beautifully for this character who’s a full-on shithead.

6 Balloons (2018) was the more dramatic portrayal, but coming out of The Studio season one’s penultimate drug episode, were you hesitant at all to play another character who’s drugged out of his mind? 

You’re the first person to ever connect 6 Balloons to The Studio, and I appreciate that. I played a heroin addict in 6 Balloons, and it’s a hardcore drama. Leading up to filming, I lost 20 pounds in a month. I’m not a very big guy as is, so that was a significant portion of my body weight. I was not a happy person, as you can imagine. But I wanted to take myself out of my comfort zone in order to try something new. And even though it’s a very small movie that not a ton of people have seen, it’s interesting how much it still comes up. It usually happens when directors are reaching out to me about slightly more serious projects that they’re working on, and then they’ll point to my performance in that. So it means a lot just because we put a lot into that one. 

But when I’m playing “Dave Franco” on The Studio — and I’m inebriated on alcohol, weed, cocaine and mushrooms at the same time — I can push the boundaries a little bit more. I can be a little sillier and a little more over the top. It’s a more manic version of being drugged out. 

In Idiots, my character partakes in drugs as well, but it’s a different kind of drug trip. This is more of a sink-into-the-couch type of trip. If someone says the wrong trigger word, it sends Mark spiraling into hell. So I like to believe that I have a lot of range when it comes to playing drug addicts.

The funniest part of Idiots to me is how Mark is constantly trying to relate to people that he has absolutely nothing in common with, such as the scene in the bathroom with Sheridan (Mason Thames) or the scene coming out of the bathroom with the motel clerk: “You’re a man who takes pride in what he does; I am too.” Like you said, he truly is full of shit.

Yeah, he really likes to believe he’s a hero, and he has a strong lack of self-awareness. He means well, but he just doesn’t know how he’s coming across to others. He says to Sheridan, “Guys like you and me, we’re used to being up in the high steel.” So there’s nothing more fun to play than a cocky fucking idiot — someone so convinced he’s a great person, and the smartest guy in the room, when in reality, he’s just a shithead.

Macon explained the title saga to me, but did you fully expect the Shitheads title to change at some point?

If I’m being totally honest, once we got through Sundance with that title, I had hopes that we could somehow take it to the finish line. But we had a very open, honest conversation with our distributor, IFC. And to their credit, they said, “Hey, we’re willing to ride this title. If you guys want to go punk rock, we are right there with you. But we have to let you know that it limits us in terms of where we can market this film. You can’t just have the word shit on a giant billboard in Hollywood.” 

Ultimately, we put so much work into this film, and because we want as many people to see it as possible, that’s why we pivoted. There’s a Lars von Trier movie called The Idiots, but no one had taken the cleaner version of Idiots, so we jumped on it.

Yeah, it’s now the movie’s second Lars von Trier reference.

You gotta love the double Lars von Trier reference.

I’m glad they kept Sheridan’s “shitheads” line in the movie as a nod to the former title and the explosive motel scene. I know they changed the line to “idiots” in the trailer, but if you were forced to do so in the movie, would you have protested that choice to ADR the new title?

Yeah, there’s no reason to change that line just because that’s how it’s represented in the trailer. Just let it play out the way we intended when we shot it.

O’Shea’s character goes off on Mason’s character after that “shitheads” line, and Mark quietly laughs as this mostly measured guy finally loses his cool. But I did wonder if you actually broke ever so slightly there given how sudden and strong the outburst is.

That was definitely intentional. That was my character being so giddy and pleased by the fact that Sheridan is finally being put in his place. He’s also entertained by the idea of this man of God stepping outside of his comfort zone and swearing in a way that he probably never has before. So there’s a lot for Mark to be titillated by in that moment.

I have to tell you a story about the time I saw Together. I was standing behind a critic as he was giving his comment to the studio rep. And he remarked, “I liked the movie, but the two leads had absolutely no chemistry.” And at the exact time, the rep and I both responded in unison: “Dude, they’re married.” Hilarity then ensued once he realized his oversight, and I still tease him about it to this day.

I appreciate you standing up for me, but to be fair, there are married couples that don’t have chemistry together on screen. We actually feared that that might be the case. And while I’m never one to pat myself on the back, that is not an issue with that film. The chemistry is fucking there. (Laughs.) I think some people mistake chemistry for characters just not liking each other. So our characters are definitely at odds for most of that film, but we’re flowing off each other in an objectively smooth and electric way.

You’ve probably been told that you’ve got good chemistry with other actors throughout your career. But I always hesitate to make that assumption because only the scene partners truly know whether they have good chemistry or not. What percentage of the time is it actually good chemistry versus good acting and good editing? 

There’s been situations where it’s known that certain people hated each other on set, and then they have “great chemistry” when you see the final product. So there are cases like that, but more often than not, if they have good chemistry on set, you’re going to feel it when you see them on the big screen. 

For me, I’ve made a conscious effort, especially in the last decade, to surround myself with people that I know and love, whether that’s my best friends or my wife. When I’m surrounded by people that I feel comfortable with, that allows me to be free and open and take risks. I know I’m going to fall on my face sometimes, but I also know that no one is going to judge me. They’ll keep encouraging me to try weird shit, and that’s when the best stuff comes.

I last spoke to you for The Rental, so what’s up with writer-director Dave Franco? Have Obsession and Backrooms motivated you to make another horror movie? 

I definitely will direct again, and I really believe that the next movie I direct will be a horror film. That said, when you’re directing something, you’re focused on that project for years at a time, and it takes everything out of you. So I’m just not currently in the state of mind to dedicate myself to one project like that.

But I’ve been able to scratch that itch by being a producer on films like Idiots that I’m also acting in. I can still be a part of all the conversations from the ground up and through the release of the film. So that’s been really fun and satisfying for me, and it still allows me to bounce around to many different projects.

Do you know yet if you’re going to be in 24 Jump Street? 

The truth is I don’t know yet. I have let them know how much I adore the franchise and that I’m here if they need me — but if Eric Molson doesn’t naturally fit into the story, I understand.

Do you think Now You 4 Me is going to happen? 

I think it’s going under the name of 4 Now You See Me: 4 Now You Don’t. (Laughs.)

You’ve clearly workshopped this title.

(Laughs.) I’ve heard that there’s a script in the works, but I haven’t seen anything. That’s as much as I know at this point.

For the sake of inspiration, The Studio welcomed any and all industry stories from the cast and crew. Did you ever offer up your experience on the 2019 motion picture 6 Underground?

(Laughs and responds sarcastically.) Why do you assume that movie spawned production stories? 

Well, I asked you about it during The Rental, and while you said it was 50 times crazier than I could possibly imagine, you also said it was better suited for an off-the-record dinner conversation.

(Laughs.) With The Studio, the truth is I wasn’t on that set long enough for them to be mining stories from me. I wasn’t around during pre-production or the whole writing process. 

But 6 Underground was a whirlwind. I played a [getaway] driver who drives around the streets of Florence, Italy, but I didn’t expect to actually do a lot of the driving with Ryan Reynolds in the passenger seat — plus Mélanie Laurent and Adria Arjona in the backseat. There was a moment when I was doing donuts next to a world-famous museum in Florence, and if I hit something, I could have literally destroyed a piece of history. Looking back, it was a slightly idiotic thing to do, and I blame myself. I should have just handed the wheel over to my stunt double.

Decades from now, when you and your wife are swapping set stories like the one you just shared, what day on Idiots will you likely bring up first? 

You know it has to be the day of the diarrhea scene. It’s a top-three poo scene in cinematic history. It’s up there with Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber. I remember calling my wife after that day and telling her I just did the craziest thing I’ve ever done on camera, which is saying a lot because I’ve done so many fucked-up things on camera. But I hold to that statement, and I’m pretty confident that it’s a violent moment people will talk about afterward.

The cast and crew experienced it for the first time together. We never tested the rig before cameras rolled on the day, and it was so volcanic that everyone on set immediately started cracking up. But the camera was still on me as I was losing my faculties in this delirious state, so I had to stay in character and pretend like nothing was happening. We did two takes, and on the second take, we decided to add a little texture with some mashed-up Cocoa Krispies.

Raunchy comedies like this used to be common.

Yeah, Idiots is meant to be a throwback comedy. It hearkens back to comedies from the early 2000s: The Hangover, Superbad, Pineapple Express, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. It’s a movie that goes hard. There are other moments besides the diarrhea scene that’ll shock audiences. They won’t believe how far we push things in this. I have personally missed these types of comedies, and I have heard from many other people who feel the same way. So I hope people check it out because, for us to be able to make more comedies again, people need to see the rare ones that do get made.

Did the MPA force Macon to cut the diarrhea scene down at all? 

There was no conversation about that. They were like, “Get rid of the title Shitheads, but show the gnarliest shit scene possible.” Respect.

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Idiots is now playing in movie theaters nationwide.