Can Nicolas Cage Score His First Hit In A Generation?

After a few days of “in theaters only” existence, Lionsgate dropped the second and more plot-heavy trailer for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. The original high-concept comedy, about a down-on-his-luck Nicolas Cage (played by, well, Nicolas Cage) accepting $1 million to hang attend a birthday party of an obsessed fan (Pedro Pascal) who is an international criminal, opens theatrical April 22.

It’ll premiere at this year’s SXSW on March 12 and will mark Cage’s first full-blown major studio wide release live-action star vehicle since Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in February of 2012. Yes, he starred in a Left Behind reboot in October 2014, had a supporting role in Oliver Stone’s Snowden in September 2016 and starred in DreamWorks animated The Croods: A New Age in November 2020, but The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent will mark a potential comeback for the eccentric icon.

And if it is actually a commercial success, it’ll mark Cage’s first star vehicle hit since the Ghost Rider sequel ($133 million worldwide on a $57 million budget) a decade ago. How long has it been? That was six weeks before The Hunger Games and three months before The Avengers.

I wrote way back in early 2009, just before his (quite good and already a relic of a bygone era) big-budget sci-fi fantasy Knowing nabbed $184 million on a $50 million budget, that Cage’s reputation was a victim of a new normal. Audiences only saw his less-than mainstream vehicles (National Treasure, Next, Ghost Rider, Bangkok Dangerous, etc.) and missed his “one for me” flicks like Adaptation, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Lord of War, The Weather Man, etc.) and then proclaimed him a sell-out.

That’s now stardom in a nutshell. Audiences only know Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart from the Twilight films because they haven’t seen/won’t see the copious indie darlings they both made before, during and after their blockbuster fantasy franchise.

Moreover, as the kinds of movies “nobody sees in theaters anymore” gets more all-encompassing, even once-viable commercial flicks like, well, everything Chris Hemsworth has made outside of the MCU, are negated within the cultural conversation. It’s hard for Tom Holland to be known as “more than Spider-Man” when nobody watches Cherry or Devil All the Time.

Anyway, back to Cage…

It’s no secret that Nic Cage has spent the last decade making a deluge of VOD/straight-to-DVD flicks. However, if you look at the blow-by-blow filmography, you’ll notice that the first handful (like Trespass, Seeking Justice, Stolen, etc.) were probably intended to be theatrical when they were made and thus boost theatrical production values.

Moreover, going through that filmography, you’ll find a genuine “Yes, this is a good movie” offering (Joe, Mandy, Mom and Dad, Color Out of Space, Pig, etc.) to argue that he’s still making a “one for me” winner for every few arguably more disposable offerings. With a few exceptions, he’s giving it his all in these less-polished offerings. This isn’t (all due respect) Bruce Willis offering lethargic glorified cameos in so-called “geezer teasers.”

In non-Covid times, I would have argued that Lionsgate would sell The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in a manner not dissimilar to how they sold the first John Wick, namely in making it an unofficial generational coronation for its top-billed star. That the new film is arriving after Pig, one of Cage’s most acclaimed films in ages, certainly won’t hurt the “Nic Cage is still good, actually” discourse presuming this new film is any good.

Can The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent be successful enough to qualify as Nic Cage’s first theatrically successful mainstream original/non-sequel star vehicle since, well, Knowing in 2009? Of course, no disrespect to an icon, but one reason we’re still debating whether Nicolas Cage can still be a star is how badly Hollywood has botched the discovery and nurturing of new stars in the last 15-20 years.