For my screenwriting class this week, I was tasked with reading Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay for Adaptation before watching the film. It was a learning experience in terms of deciphering Kaufman’s dense style, but also in remembering that Nicolas Cage can be really terrific.
But then there’s Next. And Ghost Rider. And National Treasure 2. And I’m going to guess The Sorcerer’s Apprentice will be more akin to those first 3 than, say, Raising Arizona.
And now, thanks to the resurgence of 3D technology, Cage will be taking the lead role in an action/revenge piece entitled Drive Angry. Will his acting be as flat in three dimensions? I’m on the edge of my seat.
Patrick Lussier, co-writer of My Bloody Valentine 3D, will direct the film from a script he wrote with Todd Farmer for Nu Image/Millennium Films (who are in the news quite a bit today with Rambo 5 being greenlit). The Hollywood Reporter describes the film’s concept as a “vendetta/rescue” that “spins out of control as the chase gets bloodier by the mile, leaving bodies strewn along the highway.”
Filming will start this coming April in Shreveport, Louisiana.
You know what? I’ll have faith in this project until I’m proven wrong. Maybe Cage will embrace his cheesiness and just go ballistic.
