While Depp has enjoyed commercial success as Alice's Mad Hatter, another actor has helped Disney to reinvent another beloved children's fantasy classic. That actor is James Franco, whose turn as the eponymous Oz in Oz The Great And Powerful helped put a new spin on a sleeping franchise. Franco may not have anything like the star power of Depp, but the success of Oz shows his ability to open a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollar picture as the leading man, something which once again could be useful to convince a studio to pony up the money and back a risky concept like this. Franco has an impressive ability to transform himself from one role to the next, following the charming charlatan of Oz with a critically-acclaimed performance as the grotesque rapping drug dealer Alien the standout element of day-glo exploitation flick Spring Breakers and a surprisingly successful slice of self parody in silly apocalyptic comedy This Is The End. This variety of performance and characters would stand Franco in good stead for playing a character like Dream, who is constantly seeming different to different people in different situations. Meanwhile, Franco's main previous franchise, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, should give him material to draw on for messed-up comic book family relationships. Franco has been establishing himself as a better and better actor over the last few years and his best performance, trapped between a rock and a hard place in 127 Hours, demonstrated an impressive ability at introspective performance on a small, intimate scale and in grand flights of fancy. A smart actor, always keen to try new things and keep his career varied, Sandman's ever changing genres, tropes and storytelling styles are likely to appeal to Franco, who like Gordon-Levitt is an actor interested in developing as a writer and director.
