The first The Disaster Artist trailer imagines how The Room's 'Oh hi Mark' scene went down

'I did naaaaht.'

A24 has released the first trailer for The Disaster Artist, a comedy from James Franco about cult disasterpiece The Room, which received glowing praise at early screenings and has even been tipped for potential Oscars.

The teaser sees Franco as Wiseau struggling to remember his lines and needing several prompts from the crew (something The Room actor Greg Sestero discussed in his book The Disaster Artist, on which the film is based) eventually "nailing" them in his idiosyncratic style.

When it emerged that Franco was making a film about ‘best worst movie of all time’ The Room, most assumed this was going to be a pretty esoteric passion project - an oddity for cult fans that might find life on somewhere like Netflix.

Upon screening a “work-in-progress” cut at SXSW recently though, The Disaster Artist is being labelled Oscar-worthy.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard such thunderous rolls of laughter at the Paramount Theatre, thanks to a tour-de-force (and career-best) performance by Franco,” Ramin Setoodeh wrote in Variety.

“The Academy typically doesn’t honor comedies, but there are elements in “The Disaster Artist” that may be hard to resist…Warner Bros. doesn’t have a release date set yet, but whenever The Disaster Artist hits theaters, it’s sure to be a formidable hit, especially once word-of-mouth gets out.”

(SXSW)

Franco's brother Dave plays Sestero (Mark) in the movie, with Bryan Cranston dropping in to play, curiously, himself in his Malcolm in the Middle days.

In a glowing review, The Hollywood Reporter described The Disaster Artist as a "giddy, winning balance between hilarity and heart."

Wiseau was at the screening and reportedly declined to give the film a thumbs up or thumbs down once the credits rolled, simply saying: “I have to think about it.”