James Franco Helming Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian?

James Franco apparently thinks sitting still is a bad thing because 2011 looks like it’s going to be one busy year for him. In addition to co-hosting the Academy Awards in February with a star from Love and Other Drugs (and brushing up on his acceptance speech for 127 Hours), he’s also getting ready to step behind the camera and do some directing, according to Showbiz 411.

Franco has his eye on turning William Faulkner’s classic, As I Lay Dying, into a movie and he’s so passionate about the idea that he wrote the screenplay for it himself. While the project is just being talked about right now, he hopes to get things going with it next spring.

Another big project in the works is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Franco is currently in the process of making a deal with Scott Rudin to write and direct the film in 2012.

All of this is being done while Franco takes classes at Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design, and while he makes plans to bring his art project film to the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers section.

And you think you have a busy schedule?