UPDATED: James Franco was not able to live up to the ratings hit that was Charlie Sheen, but brought in solid numbers at 3.1 million viewers last night. This is an increase of 88% of makes 18-24 from last year’s Roast of Roseanne. This year’s telecast also scored social points, making #FrancoRoast the most social show of the evening.

​Comedy Central has a solid history of clever, creative and downright insulting promos for the network’s Roasts. So James Franco, friend and punching bag to the comedy community, is certainly not left out.

The past few years of roasting Charlie Sheen, Roseanne, Donald Trump and David Hasselhoff have given Comedy Central plenty of ammunition. James Franco is just fuel to the fire, having recently appeared in the movie “This Is the End,” not only making fun of himself throughout, but starring alongside a few of the people who would soon be onstage roasting him.

The first promo released, now taken down from their site, showed a straight look at James Franco as he slowly got punched in the jaw.

Once the hard hitting was out of the way, Franco go up close and personal with himself in the next one (above), poking fun at himself and his reputation: “I’m just a boy, standing in front of me, asking me to love me.” (“Nottinghill” reference duly noted). If you watch until the end, it gets weird.

With Franco, Comedy Central seems to be going a more subtle route than, say, Roseanne or Sheen, but that’s precisely why it works so well this time around.

Next, Comedy Central followed up on some promos for the industry insiders, as Roast Master Seth Rogen tells Franco he just should bail on the whole thing as long as the network hasn’t advertised anything for the show yet, to which Comedy Central replied by tweeting:

Following up on that one just a few days later, a very slight change to the same promo ends up with a small burn on someone totally different:

They took the same premise once more for Franco to poke at himself and his multi-hyphenate ways:

The Comedy Central Roast of James Franco promos are good enough to watch on their own, whether you associate them with the telecast or not. The other strength each promo has is the consistent #FrancoRoast hash tags, which people have already begun utilizing during the taping of the show and continue to use this weekend leading up to the premiere.

Tags:


  Save as PDF