This checks out.
Nicolas Cage is “in talks” to play himself in a new meta drama about Nicolas Cage. He would be the star, crucially, and the movie would pay homage to the likes of “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Face/Off” and “Gone in 60 Seconds,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Cage, 55, will also co-produce the piece of cinema titled “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” like a Milan Kundera novel — only cagier.
The script, co-written by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, has a Cage-esque array of twists and turns. According to the industry outlet, the main character, Nicolas Cage, is at his wit’s end trying to land a role in the latest Tarantino flick, while attempting to patch things up with his teenage daughter and overcome mountains of debt. (Sound familiar?)
The fictional Cage is constantly having internal conversations with a ’90s movie star version of himself, who ridicules his flailing film career.
Things start to turn up when he meets a billionaire from Mexico, who’s a fan of his stuff and has some projects he wants to talk to Cage about. But, in a “National Treasure”-like twist, the CIA informs Cage that the billionaire is a drug kingpin, and they’d like Cage’s help trying to bust him.
When the billionaire brings his wife and daughter into the picture, well, that’s when Cage is up against the role of his life.
The trades report that the movie will have “tones of ‘Adaptation’ . . . Jean-Claude Van Damme’s meta movie ‘JCVD,’ and the John Travolta Hollywood caper ‘Get Shorty,’ among others.”
Lionsgate reportedly waged a bidding war with HBO Max and Paramount to score the film, which doesn’t yet have a premiere date. Gormican will direct and Kevin Turen, an executive producer on HBO’s controversial “Euphoria,” will produce with Cage’s production company, Saturn Films, and Mike Nilon of “Left Behind” fame.
The script was developed without the Oscar-winning cult film icon’s knowledge, but Gormican sent it to Cage with a note pleading with him to be in it. He wrote that the film was a “love letter to the actor, not something that made fun of him.” In the last couple of weeks, the “Wild at Heart” star came around to playing himself.
It helps, of course, that the pay could help put him back in the green after some high-profile tax troubles, comparable to the days when he was banking major studio checks for blockbusters and classics such as “The Rock,” “Moonstruck,” “Raising Arizona,” “Con Air” and “Peggy Sue Got Married.”
Ref;nypost.com