If you’ve heard the news that Nicolas Cage is set to play Tiger King’s Joe Exotic and thought to yourself, "How incredibly Nic Cage that is of him," it doesn’t come as close as the actor’s other upcoming role. The National Treasure actor has signed on to star in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where he’ll play a heightened version of himself who gets recruited by the CIA to take down one of his biggest fans… who just happens to be a Mexican drug kingpin. We’ve now learned that The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal could be playing that superfan.
The actor behind the helmet of the hit Disney+ Star Wars series, Narcos and Wonder Woman 1984 is reportedly in talks to star alongside Nicolas Cage as “Javi,” an admirer of the Face/Off actor who pays him $1 million to make an appearance at his lavish birthday party, per The Wrap. The wild concept that will feature the legendary actor getting into frantic conversations with an egotistical version of himself from the ‘90s after finding himself broke and desperate for work.
According to the film’s synopsis, Nicolas Cage agrees to meet Javi at the birthday party, only to later be contacted by the CIA, who reveal he has to go undercover for them so they can take Javi down. The stakes double when Cage’s ex-wife and daughter get caught up in the mess too. Now the actor doesn’t really have a daughter, but he does have four ex-wives: Patricia Arquette, Elvis Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie, Alice Kim and Erika Koike, the latter of whom he was married to for a mere four days.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was written by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, who sent Nicolas Cage a letter about their concept in the hopes he would star in their homage to the actor. He agreed and apparently nabbed a huge paycheck for the job of playing himself. The movie impressed three studios so much, they went into a bidding war, leaving Lionsgate on top. Massive Talent is scheduled to come out on March 19, 2021, and casting is starting to move along. Cage explained his role further with these words:
It’s a stylised version of me, and the fact I even have to refer to myself in the third person makes me extremely uncomfortable. There are many scenes in the movie where modern or contemporary – here we go – ‘Nic Cage’ and then young ‘Nic Cage’ are colliding and arguing and battling it out. It’s an acrobatic approach to acting. … I’m probably going to have to look at a couple of the movies from the past again, because I think we’re gonna have to reenact some of those sequences. It’s like walking through a Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari version of Con Air and Face/Off.
If Pedro Pascal officially nabs this part, he’d be a great addition to this exciting anomaly of a movie. We’ve seen the actor can play at comedy and intensity, and he would be a formidable foe to Nicolas Cage’s... Nic Cage. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more updates on upcoming movies.
