Nicolas Cage has made a lot of movies in his career, and he plans on making many more. Nearly 120 films in, retirement is simply not an option for the action movie star.
Promoting his latest thriller movie Prisoners of the Ghostland, Cage told Entertainment Weekly that filmmaking is too important for him to step away. “That can’t happen. To do what I do in cinema has been like a guardian angel for me, and I need it,” he says. “I’m healthier when I’m working, I need a positive place to express my life experience, and filmmaking has given me that. So I’m never going to retire. Where are we now, 117 movies?”
We’re not keeping score, but Cage has been in a lot of films. Some of them, like Con-Air, Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona, and Adaptation, are among the best movies of all time. Others, that we shall not name, are memorable for less than positive reasons. In any case, Cage has worked consistently since he broke into Hollywood, to the point he’s made Jerry Lewis a bit jealous.
“Jerry Lewis was one of my friends, and he and I would go and have dinner together, and he would say, ‘How many movies you got?'” Cage recalls. “I go, ‘I got about 100, how many you got?’, ‘I got 40. So you got twice as much as me?’, ‘Well, I didn’t know that, Jerry’.”
This year alone, Cage has three pictures out: horror movie Willy’s Wonderland, John Wick-like drama Pig, and Prisoners of the Ghostland this month. In the latter, Cage plays a crook who’s busted out of jail by the local governor so he can go retrieve the politician’s kidnapped daughter. For insurance, he’s strapped into a leather jacket that will explode after 24 hours.
Sofia Boutella costars with Cage in the flick, and it’s directed by Sion Sono. Prisoners of the Ghostland is in theatres and on demand September 17, 2021. Next year, then, Nicolas Cage plays himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Unbearable weight, indeed.