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NEED TO KNOW
Dave Franco reveals to PEOPLE that his guiding perspective after turning 40 involves whether or not he’s “having fun”
Franco, who turned 40 in June 2025, voices a villainous insect character named Titus in Pixar’s new movie Hoppers
Hoppers is in theaters March 6
As Dave Franco puts it, he’s just trying to have fun these days.
Franco, who turned 40 in June 2025, caught up with PEOPLE at the Los Angeles premiere of the new Pixar movie Hoppers on Monday, Feb. 23. Asked what new perspective he’s gained since reaching that milestone, Franco says his “main criteria for choosing a job” has shifted. It’s now become, “Do I like the people involved? And do I think I’ll have fun with the role?”
“Because of that, I’ve been in these situations where I’m surrounded by people that I love and trust, and that allows me to be free and have fun,” he says. “I think because of that, it allows me to do better work too. And so I think this is a long way of saying I just kind of reminded myself, like, this should be fun. It is hard work in moments, but why else are we doing this if we’re not having fun?”
Franco costars with a voice cast that includes Meryl Streep, Kathy Najimy, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm and Piper Curda in Hoppers, in which lead character Mabel (Curda, 28) utilizes “a new technology to ‘hop’ her consciousness into a lifelike robotic beaver and communicate directly with animals,” as a synopsis reads.
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The actor tells PEOPLE he accepted the offer to take part in the movie without asking any questions. “I said, ‘Absolutely. I don’t need to know what the character is. I don’t need to know what the story is, I am in,’ ” Franco says. “And it was as good of an experience, if not better, than I could have ever imagined. They just make it easy because the scripts are so good, they encourage you just to bring your own personality and they encourage you to have a good time.”
“And so I was just in this booth sweating my ass off, jumping around, putting everything I could into this villainous character,” he adds.
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Franco previously told PEOPLE at the November 2025 premiere of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t that he intended to take a break from acting after he appeared in several movies over the last year, including the horror movie Together, the Colleen Hoover book adaptation Regretting You and his much-publicized guest role on Seth Rogen’s The Studio.
“Basically, we’re getting through this week of press and then I will disappear for a while,” he said at the time. “I’m sure people are sick of me, and I will go to the middle of nowhere and climb into a hole.”
Other than Hoppers, Franco’s next movie release includes a comedy titled The S—heads, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. That movie does not yet have a release date.
Hoppers is in theaters March 6.
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