When you think Nicolas Cage, you think football. Everyone knows that. It follows, then, that when casting a movie about one of the most iconic figures in American football history, you’d cast Cage.
Blessedly, we have our first look at Cage as John Madden—the legend of both real and video-game football—who he will portray in Madden, an upcoming Amazon MGM Studios film written and directed by David O. Russell. Madden, the late football player, coach, broadcaster, and virtual-sports titan, was known for his gregarious personality and artful work on the telestrator. Cage, meanwhile, is known as the eccentric Academy Award-winning actor who collects snakes, owns a pyramid, and chases after the real-life Holy Grail.
It is unclear how much Cage knows about the gridiron, and I would bet millions of dollars he’d never played a game of Madden before landing this role. (Can you imagine the experience of firing up an XBox and dropping 50 points on Nicolas Cage?) But there is no doubt in my mind that he’s since learned football terminology with the same alacrity he brought to, fictionally, stealing the Declaration of Independence. Frankly, if there’s any actor in the world I’d trust to immerse themself in a video game, it’d be Cage. You’re going to throw a bunch of interceptions, king. It’s just part of the game.
In the photo of Cage in Madden garb—specifically ‘70s Madden, when he had the feathery hair and cool Raiders jackets—we see a man who, now 61 years old, is much older than Madden was when he retired from coaching at age 42, but the resemblance is pretty solid. That said, the most striking visual is Cage’s co-star, Christian Bale, dressed up like Raiders owner Al Davis. In his Hall of Fame career overseeing the silver and black, Davis coined the motto “Just win, baby!”, often displaying the type of intensity that has also become Bale’s calling card. For those who mostly remember Davis as a man of advanced age, the decision to cast Bale might be surprising, but in seeing what Bale looks like when playing young Davis, it seems like a hand-in-glove fit. It’s easy to forget that Bale is British, so he surely had to enroll in (American) Football 101 as well, but you don’t need to understand X’s and O’s to inhabit the spirit of a cutthroat executive like Davis.
The fun doesn’t stop with the leading roles, though. John Mulaney has signed on to play Trip Hawkins, the Electronic Arts executive who helped Madden build his video game empire. Kathryn Hahn will play Madden’s wife, Virginia, with Sienna Miller as Davis’ wife, Carol. David O. Russell is set to direct the film, which does not have a release date yet.
If there was ever a time for ESPN to revive the show Madden Nation—in which America’s most hardcore gamers, with names like Da Secret and Fred Dizzle traveled the country in a bus playing Madden for cash—it’s now. Let me pay a premium to watch the guy from National Treasure try to stop the Dark Knight from getting into the end zone.