This post has been updated with the latest cast and production details.
TORONTO — James Franco is going back in time and is back to Toronto.
The actor is producer and lead actor of 11/22/63, a nine-hour miniseries based on the 2011 novel by Stephen King.
The project will shoot until Oct. 19 in Toronto and other parts of Ontario.
Franco will play Jacob Epping, a high school English teacher in Maine who travels back in time to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
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Chris Carter, T.R. Knight and Canada’s Sarah Gadon are also in the cast.
King’s novel focuses on a number of fictional characters but includes several real-life people, including Kennedy’s killer Lee Harvey Oswald.
A regular guest at the Toronto International Film Festival, Franco made 2008’s Camille in Toronto. (He also starred in last year’s controversial comedy The Interview, which was filmed in Vancouver.)
In 2010, Toronto played host to production of The Kennedys, an eight-episode miniseries starring Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy and Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy. The city’s Downsview Park doubled as the Dallas airport for scenes depicting the hours leading up to the president’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Last September, Warner Bros. and J.J. Abrams’ company Bad Robot announced a deal to produce a miniseries for U.S. streaming service Hulu.
King and Bridget Carpenter (Parenthood) are co-writers and executive producers.
11/22/63 is scheduled to debut in 2016.
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