At this point in his career, it seems like there isn’t much Nicolas Cage hasn’t done. Throughout many genres, Cage has pretty much played every kind of character imaginable, with some of his recent roles including a truffle hunter searching for his pet pig, a night shift janitor under attack from animatronics, and a Wild West gunslinger. He’s even played a heightened version of himself in the action-comedy movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and will soon appear as Count Dracula in the horror-comedy Renfield.
But if you can believe it, there’s still a genre Cage hasn’t ventured into, and for that reason, he’s hoping to make it happen. The actor has been known to sing for certain other films, such as the David Lynch classic Wild at Heart, but he’s never starred in an actual musical. Cage now tells Empire that he wants to do a musical next, perhaps taking on a key role in an adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar, but not as the Son of God. He has another role in mind if he can get involved with something like that.
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Cage went on to explain how one of history’s most revered singers, Elvis Presley, inspired his performance in Wild at Heart.
“I haven’t done a musical yet. I’d like to try that. I’m not much of a singer. I did sing okay in Wild at Heart, I thought, but I’ve since blown my voice out singing ‘Purple Rain’ incorrectly in karaoke bars. I think I’d make a good Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar.”
“In Wild at Heart I was trying to approximate what it felt like to see Warhol’s marvelous collages of Elvis Presley as a cowboy with a six-shooter. I wanted to see if you could do that with film performance. Plus, I think if David Lynch could cast anyone in any of his movies he would have wanted to have cast Elvis, so I think he was excited to roll with it when I suggested.”
Nicolas Cage Will Next Be a Vampire
We will soon see Cage take on the role of a vampire in Renfield. While Cage previously played a man who mistakenly believed he was turning into a vampire in Vampire’s Kiss, but he plays the most well-known bloodsucker of them all, Count Dracula, in the new film. Renfield was recently rated R for its content including blood and gore, but director Chris McKay has also teased that it has a lot of humor, action, and heart.
“We’re doing something different. It’s going far away from what you would typically think of a Dracula movie: it’s modern, and it’s through the lens of Dracula as a sh*tty boss,” McKay told Empire. “[It’s] not a straight-up comedy. There is definitely a tongue-in-cheek premise — what if your boss was literally the boss from hell? — but it’s also got action, it’s got a lot of heart, it’s not without menace.”
Renfield will be released on April 14, 2023.
