Nicolas Cage was offended when he first heard the storyline of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”
Premise: The movie features a fictionalized version of Cage who is down on his luck and accepts $1 million from a super-fan to attend a party in Spain. The fan, played by Pedro Pascal, turns out to be obsessive, with a huge collection of memorabilia from Cage’s real-life movies.
Things take a turn when a CIA operative recruits Cage, forcing him to live up to the characters he’s played in action-packed movies, per The A.V. Club.
Yes but: Even though the Oscar-winning actor played himself in the movie, he initially didn’t want to be involved. He was concerned that the film version of him didn’t represent who he actually was.
“I turned it down three or four times,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
He received a letter from writer and director Tom Gormican. “Then I thought, ‘OK, he’s not just trying to mock so-called Nick Cage; there is a real interest in some of the earlier work.’ His tone was more of a celebration of some of (the actor’s iconic onscreen) moments — like being at the bottom of the pool in ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ or (using) the gold guns in ‘Face/Off,’” he said.
The cast: The movie also stars Tiffany Haddish, Pedro Pascal, Ike Barinholtz and Neil Patrick Harris.
Release date: “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” will hit theaters April 22.
Flashback: After Cage went through financial issues in 2009, he owed the IRS over $14 million in back taxes. At the time, he started accepting a high number of roles, such as the hitman in “Bangkok Assassin” and a wizard in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
But as of late, he has preferred indie movies to Hollywood — whether it's “Color Out of Space,” a Lovecraftian horror film, or “Willy’s Wonderland,” where he fights possessed animatronic mascots.