James Franco's Tommy Wiseau makes a 'real Hollywood movie' in The Disaster Artist trailer

Like many others, Tommy Wiseau came to Los Angeles with a dream to make it in Hollywood. And then he made The Room, the 2003 film that’s been deemed “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.”

That film went on to become a cult classic and the making of it is now getting its own shot at the big screen in the hilariously good The Disaster Artist, which dropped a new trailer Tuesday morning following the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

James Franco directs and stars as Wiseau, the director-star of The Room who meets his friend and future costar, Greg Sestero (Dave Franco), in an acting class. As the new footage shows, when Tommy has trouble breaking into the business (“It’s not gonna happen — not in a million years” scoffs a producer played by Judd Apatow), he sets out to make his own movie, assembling a cast and crew that includes Sestero.

Wiseau, speaking in his inscrutable accent, explains that he’ll play Johnny, “a true American hero. He has it all — good looks, many friends — and also maybe Johnny is vampire. We’ll see.” Turns out he’s not, but that might have been less weird than what does end up in the movie.

The Disaster Artist first screened to rave reviews as a work-in-progress in March at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Speaking with EW a few months later, Franco revealed that Wiseau has given the film his (nearly) complete approval.

“He didn’t see it until SXSW, and we were unsure of what he was going to think, especially because he said, [mimicking Wiseau’s accent] ‘Greg book only 40 percent true,’” recalls Franco. “It was like, well, that’s what we based it on, so what are you going to think about our movie? And that screening was so successful, it was like a rock concert. That and the Spring Breakers screening at SXSW [in 2013] would be the two greatest screenings of my life, I imagine. I was like, ‘So, Tommy, what did you think of the movie?’ And he said, ‘I approve 99.9 percent.’ And we were like, ‘What was the 0.1 percent? He said, ‘I think the lighting, in the beginning, a little off.’ [Laughs] I told Brandon [Trost, The Disaster Artist‘s cinematographer]. He was like, Yeah, maybe we should watch The Room, get some lighting pointers!”

The Disaster Artist is being released Dec. 1. Watch the new trailer above, and see the film’s poster below.