NICOLAS CAGE

IS BACK ON TRACK…

The king of crazy is going through a Nic-conaissance.

Igrew up in the ’70s watching Rock Hudson on McMillan & Wife, Dennis Weaver in McCloud, Charles Bronson in the movie of the week, Peter Falk in Columbo… I began to develop a relationship with these characters and these actors,” Nic Cage told The New York Times in August 2019. “And with video on demand, I felt that if I made more movies… people would be able to tune in at home and go, ‘What’s the next movie that Nic made?’”

Hmmm. That might be, but Cage’s dive into VOD these past few years means he’s appeared in a lot of crud. Teasers never lost belief in the Oscar-winning actor who once lit up such quality films as Birdy, Wild At Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing Out The Dead and Adaptation – not to mention his 1996-1997 triple bill of A-grade action, The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off. But the faith occasionally wavered. How could it not? For every Mandy, Mom And Dad or Dog Eat Dog, there’s been a deluge of duds.

But it appears that Cage is now finding the right projects to harness his energy. The upturn began with sterling voice work as Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and Superman in Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, and continued with a crazed turn in Lovecraft adap Colour Out Of Space. At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, he had a katana grafted to his arm and a testicle blown off in bonkers east-western Prisoners Of The Ghostland. In February, he fought demonic animatronics in Willy’s Wonderland. We’ll soon see him star opposite Pedro Pascal and Neil Patrick Harris in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, in which he plays himself but is really a CIA agent. And then there’s Pig, in which he stars as a truffle hunter who must recover his kidnapped porker. Oh, and how could we forget Cage signing up to play tiger king Joe Exotic in Amazon’s eight-part mini-series?

“It can be a very blurry line,” Cage has said of the difference between good and bad acting. Looks like his sights have finally sharpened. JG

ETA | TBC / PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND, THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT AND PIG WILL BE RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR.