Nicolas Cage: The Fantasy Life of Oscar Winner and Box Office Poison

In November 2020, Universal Pictures’ animated sequel “The Croods: A New Age” finally returned to theaters after a lapse of 7 years!At the end of 2016, there were news reports that after it was acquired by Comcast Group (the parent company of Universal Pictures) that year, the “The Croods: A New Age” project was suspended.But fortunately, the project started to reopen after a year.The first dubbing cast Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and others have all returned, and Catherine Keener, Peter Dingraki and others have also joined the lineup.

You may not believe it. Nicolas Cage, who dubbed “Grug” in the film, is well-known for action movies such as “Ghost Rider”, “National Treasure” and “The Rock”.

However, the first “The Croods” was Nicolas Cage’s actor’s career, the world’s highest grossing movie, none of them.

The film earned US$587 million worldwide, higher than original works such as “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Crazy Aliens”, and even better than “Kung Fu Panda 3.”

It also won a box office of 390 million yuan in mainland China.

“The Croods: A New Age” is Nicolas Cage’s 8th animated film, the first animated sequel, and his 100th work as an actor.

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And Nicolas Cage’s life can be called crazy!

In January 1964, Nicholas Kim Coppola was born in Long Beach, California, which is fairly warm.

His father is a professor of literature of Italian descent, his mother is a dancer with German, English, Scottish and Polish descent, and his uncle is the famous director Francis Ford Coppola.

Nicholas, who was also surnamed Coppola at the time, had aspired to be an actor since he was a child. He started acting in campus dramas when he was in school. His idol was James Dean.

At the age of 15, the young Nicholas asked his uncle Coppola, wanting him to give himself an audition opportunity, and claimed that “I want to tell you what is acting”, after the performance in the car, in exchange for silence.

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After all, Coppola at this moment has already directed actors such as Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

Although he wanted the help of his uncle, but in order to avoid nepotism to obliterate his own efforts, Nicholas Kim Coppola, a maniac of American comics, changed his name to Nicolas Cage-the Cage of Luke Cage.

In 1982, with “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (there is a bikini scene in this film), Cage officially started his career as a film actor. This is the only film with the name “Nicholas Coppola” in the ending subtitles. Cage movie.

He auditioned for Coppola’s “The Outsiders” (1983), but his uncle did not use nepotism, and the film’s actor eventually gave it to Matt Dillon.

Later, Cage finally acted in his uncle’s movie, which appeared in both “Rumble Fish” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” directed by Coppola.

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In 1984, Cage met the fledgling Johnny Depp in Los Angeles. It was he who encouraged Depp to embark on an actor career and made Depp star in the actor’s debut “A Nightmare on Elm Street”.

Cage has been involved in films of all sizes, whether it is mainstream commercial films or art films with small and medium-sized budgets.

Don’t look at Cage now that everyone has paid off the debt that everyone owed with “Rotten Movie King”, “Box Office Poison”,” all kinds of ridicule, but he was nominated for 2 Oscar winners and won 1 time-Oscar winner, surprise !

“Leaving Las Vegas” in 1995 made Cage an Oscar winner, and “Adaptation” in 2003 made him nominated. He lost to Adrien Brody’s “The Pianist”.

In 2002, Cage directed the feature film “Sony” for the first time, and his career as an actor has been ups and downs.

Critics praised Cage’s performance in “Lord of War” and “The Weather Man”, but these two films were not so popular with North American audiences.

The remake of “The Wicker Man” failed both at the box office and the cost of $40 million was not recovered.

In 2007, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe had not yet opened, “Ghost Rider” adapted from Marvel Comics won more than $200 million in box office worldwide!

Earning money goes to earning money, and the film still received a lot of criticism.

Most of the commercially successful Cage movies are action/adventure, such as the “National Treasure” series, “The Rock” and so on.

Speaking of “The Rock”, Cage has a relationship with another actor in the film, Sean Connery who has just passed away recently.

In 1988, when Sean Connery won the Oscar for “Best Supporting Actor” with “The Untouchables”, it was Cage who awarded him the award.

In 2013, Cage finally ushered in the box office of his career.

This year, the cartoon “The Croods” dubbed by him was released, and while the reputation was soaring, it also dazzled all other live-action movies he starred in with a global box office of $585 million.

After that, Cage continued to wander in various literary and artistic movies, but not all achieved ideal results.

For example, “Joe”, which was released in the same year as “The Croods”, was horrible. Although the $4 million budget is already very low, the box office is still a mere 2.36 million.

The film has been screened at Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, and the reviews are very good, but if it doesn’t sell well, it doesn’t sell well.

Cage’s movies began to appear frequently in major film festivals.

For example, the horror comedy “Mom and Dad” was screened in the “Midnight Madness” section of the 2017 Toronto Film Festival, “Mandy” appeared at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and so on.

In the same year, Cage finally dubbed Superman in the cartoon “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies”!

The relationship between him and Clark Kent has a long history.

More than 20 years ago, Cage originally planned to play Superman in “Superman Lives” directed by Tim Burton, and even tried on a Superman uniform. However, this project from the 90s has not yet been photographed.

There is a documentary titled “The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?” about how this project was aborted, and Cage’s trial installation highlights are also included.

Over the years, Cage has also been responding to questions related to “Superman”.

In fact, he is still interested in starring in “Superman” movies, but he has no longer taken the route of a big studio, but has plunged into the low-cost world.

He dubbed DC’s animated characters, and Marvel has not fallen. In 2018, Cage became the “Spider-Man Noir” in Sony’s animation “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”.

In 1990, Weston Coppola Cage, the eldest son of Cage and his girlfriend, was born.

Weston Coppola Cage is a black metal band lead singer, looks very metallic, he also appeared in Cage’s “Lord of War”, but the eldest son’s mother is not Cage’s wife.

He has been married four times, the first time with Patricia Arquette (1995-2001).

The story between the two of them is quite magical. Cage saw it on the first day in the early 80s
When Patricia Arquette asked her to marry him, she scared her away.

Many years later, they met again, fell in love, got married, and divorced (and tried to leave twice).

The second time was with Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley.

Cage is a big fan of Elvis. The role in “Wild at Heart” is based on the image of Elvis, but this marriage that took place in 2002 only lasted 107 days.

The third wife, Alice Kim, is of Asian origin. She was only 21 years old when he gave birth to his youngest son Kal-El (the name of Superman when he was born). The two met at the sushi restaurant where Alice worked as a waiter.

This marriage is relatively long, from 2004 to 2016, it lasted for a full 12 years.

In March last year, Cage got married again in Las Vegas. This time he regretted it more quickly. After 4 days, he applied for cancellation of the marriage…

Cage and his first wife Patricia Arquette

Cage has also done many other things, for example, Kathleen Turner wrote in her memoir in 2008.

During the filming of “Peggy Sue Got Married”, he was arrested twice for drunk driving.

In 2011, he was also arrested in New Orleans for abusing domestic violence against Alice, and the charges were later dropped.

One night when he woke up at home, Cage found that a naked man was eating popsicles on the side of his bed… The police arrested the man, but Cage did not sue him in the end.

Cage is also slowly facing beyond making ends meet because of his profligacy.

What dinosaur skulls, haunted houses, original “Superman” comics, castles, self-built pyramids, private jets, meteorites, Lamborghini, small islands, all kinds of real estate, yachts…

According to this spending method, it is not enough to make any money. In addition to selling real estate and family properties, Cage began to frantically pick up all kinds of large and small movies, and they would not refuse to pay the debt.

As an old friend of the Chinese people, Cage entered the Chinese film market in 2014.

In the romantic action film “Outcast”, Cage partnered with “Skywalker” Hayden Christensen, played by the samurai, to rescue the princess played by Crystal Liu and embarked on a murderous escape journey.

Unfortunately, this “Outcast” failed to get Cage out of the spell of “box office poison”.

The film was withdrawn on the first day of emergency and encountered a “day trip” in theaters. It was renamed and released again half a year later. The cumulative box office was only 24.33 million yuan.

After “Outcast”, Cage has not received more Chinese movies. It seems that money in the Chinese market is not as easy to earn as imagined.

Next, the thriller “Prisoners of the Ghostland” starring Cage and Sofia Paotra and directed by Sion Sono has been filmed in Japan and is currently in post-production.

Cage will also star in the TV series “Joe Exotic” for the first time, and his leading actor is Joe Exotic in the Netflix documentary “Tiger King” that became popular in the United States this summer.

Cage even played “Nicolas Cage” himself in the new film “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”!

The story tells that the actor Cage desperately wants to get a role in a new film directed by Quentin Tarantino (who really wants to work with Quentin).

He would occasionally talk to himself in the 90s, and he would complain about him. He has made too many bad films now, and he is no longer shining…

Although this is not a biographical film, the film is full of Cage’s own shadow, and will pay tribute to many of his previous works, including “Leaving Las Vegas”, “Gone in 60 Seconds”, “Adaptation” and so on.

This film is also quite amazing. I didn’t intend to sell it. It was just a sample script written by two screenwriters.

But after the script was sent out, all parties showed great interest, and they were given to Cage’s deity to watch, and Cage was really interested.

After 2020, Nicolas Cage’s new works have been put on hold, and audiences who love him will still not give up on him.

Nothing else is important, let us look forward to more good and bad works by Cage.