James Franco and his co-defendants have agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a lawsuit alleging he intimidated students at an acting and film school he founded into gratuitous and exploitative sexual situations.

FILE - This Sept. 5, 2019 file photo shows James Franco at the premiere of HBO's "The Deuce" third and final season in New York. A settlement deal has been reached in a lawsuit that alleged James Franco intimidated students at an acting and film school he founded into exploitative sexual situations. A filing in Los Angeles Superior Court said a settlement had been reached in the class-action suit brought by former students at the now-defunct Studio 4. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)LOS ANGELES – A tentative settlement has been reached in a lawsuit that alleged James Franco intimidated students at an acting and film school he founded into gratuitous and exploitative sexual situations, attorneys for the plaintiffs said Saturday. In a subsequent interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Franco called the sexual misconduct stories about him inaccurate, but said, “If I’ve done something wrong, I will fix it.

LOS ANGELES - Two actresses sued James Franco and the acting and film school he founded Thursday, saying he intimidated his students into gratuitous and exploitative sexual situations far beyond those acceptable on Hollywood film sets. Franco "sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education," the suit alleges. The women say students were led to believe roles in Franco's films would be available to those who went along. The lawsuit alleges that to take Franco's master class, students had to audition by simulating sex acts on film, which he watched to choose candidates. ___This story has been corrected to show that the name of the school Franco founded is Studio 4, not Studio 24.