Oz Star James Franco Loses Advertising Contracts; Three Campaigns Dropped Franco For Involvement In Sex Films

James Franco, the star of Disney’s new blockbuster hit, “Oz The Great and Powerful”, is not feeling so wonderful lately, after losing advertising deals because of his involvement with sexually risqué productions.

Franco, 34, produced “Kink”, a documentary about a hardcore porn studio. He also directed “Interior: Leather Bar” with Travis Mathews, which they dubbed as their imagined version of the 40 minutes of cut and destroyed gay S&M footage from the controversial 1980 film "Cruising".

“It’s a risk. The films I have did get a lot of praise, but I did get some pressure from other areas,” says Franco. “I was supposed to do a commercial with this company and they pulled out because they weren’t happy, they didn’t like the subject matter of the films.”

The brand that pulled out from hiring Franco was a champagne company, “You’d think they’d be grown up enough but I’ve had it happen with this company and a car company as well,” says the actor. This is not the first time a company said no to Franco because of doing very risky work, it was also reported that a car company didn’t hire him for the same reasons.

In an interview with gay magazine, Attitude, Franco said, “If I’m at the threshold of doing a project and the question comes up, ‘Will this be harmful to your career?’ I never want that to be a deciding factor."

While promoting his new film, “Spring Breakers” at SXSW, Franco revealed that he has lost three kinds of advertising campaigns so far because the companies don’t like his image. He says he knows that the films he put out at Sundance caused him to be dropped by three companies.

Although the actor will not divulge the companies that dropped him, he remains to be the face of the Gucci’s made-to-measure campaign and has produced several short film campaigns for the brand, '7 For All Mankind' jeans.

He is very much aware of the risk he takes when taking on roles or producing films outside of the mainstream perception. Although he has regularly received applause for his courage to take on brave artistic endeavors, it doesn’t come without the risk of being deemed not mainstream enough or too risqué for the general public.

The week immediately following the opening of “Oz The Great and Powerful”, Franco is on the road to promote “Spring Breakers”, where he plays Alien, a gun-slinging, southern accent, grill wearing, weed toking, gangster rapper, who involves three innocent girls in a war of chaos. It is a completely different take on the Franco known by the public in his most recently released major studio film.