John Steinbeck News

What did we do to deserve James Franco? A good actor who sees himself as director, writer, poet, artist, visionary and God only knows what else, he thinks he's Orson Welles.

He acts, he writes, he directs, he produces, he paints, he teaches, he sometimes hosts Oscar ceremonies, and now, he selfies.

The show, co-starring Chris O'Dowd and Leighton Meester, said Monday it earned $1,038,106 for the week ending Sunday, setting a new eight-performance weekly record gross at the Longacre Theatre and marking the first time the theater ever housed a show that crossed the $1 million mark.

The Broadway revival of John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men , which marked the Main Stem debuts of co-stars James Franco and Chris O'Dowd , plays its final performance July 27 at 3 PM at The Longacre Theatre.

Reviewing the Broadway production of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," when it opened in April, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times that James Franco's portrayal of George is "a tight, internal performance begging for a camera's close-up."

Get ready for George, Lennie and the rest of the gang on the big screen. The Broadway revival of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men , starring James Franco , Chris O'Dowd , Leighton Meester and Jim Norton , will be filmed during its final weeks of performances at the Longacre Theatre for a broadcast by the U.K.'s National Theatre Live.

Welcome to this week's edition of our new WEEKLY GROSSES ANALYSIS, part of our new Industry Insights section that will feature insider industry information, commentary and insights! Read on for all the weekly grosses statistics for the movers and shakers from the latest grosses , 7/20/2014.

If you thought Rex Reed's reviews of Melissa McCarthy were harsh, his recent assessment of James Franco's debut as a theater director is even more withering.

Proving their chops as Broadway draws, James Franco , Chris O'Dowd , Leighton Meester and Jim Norton set a second house record last week as their run in the revival of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men comes to a close.

The bigotry and fear greeting busloads of Central American mothers and children is almost word for word what Steinbeck's Joads heard 75 years ago.

Salinas, Calif., has a museum for its hometown literary icon, John Steinbeck. Asheville, N.C., has a museum in the home Victorian writer Thomas Wolfe lived in.

George and Lennie, Steinbeck's enduring characters in "Of Mice and Men," left their footprints in the fields and waterways of Monterey County.

SPEAKING UP: The experience of playing a woman who doesn't have a name, and who dies without anybody really caring, has been a difficult one for Leighton Meester.

The sugar program, a government-created cartel administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture , costs consumers an estimated $3.5 billion annually and has reduced employment by more than 127,000 jobs since 1997.

Here's a quick roundup of stories you may have missed today. 'I'm Not a Tart:' Of Mice and Men 's Leighton Meester Pens Feminist Essay Leighton Meester has penned a feminist essay about her character in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men .

Eternal prep-schooler Leighton Meester has written an excellent term paper for The Huffington Post about John Steinbeck's subversive feminism in Of Mice and Men .

Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner James Franco , BAFTA and Tony Award nominee Chris O'Dowd, Leighton Meester and Tony and Olivier Award winner Jim Norton star in John Steinbeck 's masterpiece about chasing the American dream, OF MICE AND MEN on Broadway.

Week 7 of the Broadway season held fairly steady over the previous week, showing a gain of $391,465 over the week before to a total take of $25,509,080, according to figures released by the trade group the Broadway League More than half the uptick came from increases for two star-driven dramas.

John Steinbeck called it "the mother road," the same stretch of highway the novelist sent his long-suffering Joad family hurtling west in "The Grapes of Wrath."

James Franco directs his "Child of God" star Scott Haze in Robert Boswell's drama about a young man wrongly convicted of rape, who re-encounters his accuser nine years later.