James Franco plays gay again in new cowboy crime drama

James Franco is set to play gay again in upcoming crime drama movie Wild Horses.

The thriller will see Franco star opposite Josh Hartnett as a gay man named Ben, who may hold the key to unlocking the mystery surrounding the death of a local boy over a decade earlier.

Wild Horses will be the oh-who’s-even-counting-anymore time the 37-year-old has played a gay character on the big screen, after starring turns in LGBT films like The Broken Tower and award-winning biopics Milk and I Am Michael.

Franco – who described himself earlier this year as “gay in my art and straight in my life” – also produced and starred in 2013 docu-fiction film Interior. Leather Bar, which imagined the actor attempting to recreate the 40 minutes of deleted sexually explicit footage from 1980s controversy-baiter Cruising.

Set to be released Stateside next Friday (June 5), Wild Horses sees Texas Ranger Samantha Payne (Luciana Duvall) reopen a 15-year-old Missing Persons case and uncover clues linking a local boy’s death to wealthy family man, Scott Briggs (played by writer and director Robert Duvall).

With the unexpected return of his estranged gay son Ben (Franco), Briggs must find a way to either silence the law for good, or come to terms with the hidden relationship between Ben and the boy that he tried to end years ago.

We love a good gay mystery movie, but something tells us this might not top I Am Michael, which saw Franco engaged in an actual threesome with Zachary Quinto and Desperate Housewives’ Charlie Carver – click here to see the pictures.

Watch the trailer for Wild Horses below:

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