Next year, Nicolas Cage plays himself in comedy movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. It sounds like a great laugh, but Cage himself won’t be partaking.
Speaking to Collider, the action movie actor says the whole premise is a bit much for him, not least because his character isn’t who he actually is in real life. “I’m never going to see that movie. I’m told it’s a good movie,” Cage explains. “My manager, Mike Nilon, who is also a producer on it, looked at it. He was very happy. I’m told the audience loved the movie. But it’s just too much of a whacked-out trip for me to go to a movie theater and watch me play Tom Gormican’s highly-neurotic, anxiety-ridden version of me.”
As Cage puts it, Gormican kept pushing towards this other side of him that he doesn’t really enjoy, making the whole thing an odd experience. “I said ‘Tom, that’s not really me. I’m really [made of] quiet, meditative, thoughtful moments. I’m not this neurotic, high-strung, anxiety-ridden guy all the time’,” Cage says. “But he said, ‘Well, neurotic Cage is the best Cage.’ I said, ‘OK, OK. Let’s go, man. I’ll do what you want.’ I won’t see it. But I do hope you enjoy it.”
Before The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, we have Prisoners of the Ghostland, the thriller movie Cage is currently promoting. In that, he plays a professional thief who’s tasked with retrieving a politician’s kidnapped daughter. There’s samurai and shotguns and he wears an explosive suit.
Cage was also in Pig this past summer, and horror movie Willy’s Wonderland earlier in the year. He’s a busy man, and he has no intention of retiring any time soon, or ever. In fact, he was just cast in his first western.
Prisoners of the Ghostland is direction bby Sion Sono, and co-stars Sofia Boutella. It’s in theatres and on VOD from September 17. For more wild rides, here’s the best science fiction movies.