Late last week, Jordana Spiro (“My Boys,” “Love Bites”) joined the cast of Joel Schumacher’s “Trespass” opposite Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman. She was supposed to playing the role of Petal Simone — Cage’s girlfriend in a film about a husband and wife’s held for ransom, who’s predicament grows more dire amid the discovery of betrayal and deception.
The film seemed to be ramping up and starting to put the final casting piece in place. Well, maybe not so much anymore. Deadline is reporting that Nicolas Cage appears to have abruptly bailed on the film, which is scheduled to start shooting in two weeks.
The Millennium Films project (they ironically put out Cage’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans”) is set to shoot in Louisiana in mid August, but apparently after “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” world press tour, Cage went AWOL in the Bahamas, and no one’s heard from him.
Evidently, it’s possible that Cage could have a change of heart — he might just be overwhelmed and need of some R&R at the moment — but Millennium’s Avi Lerner is apparently scrambling to find a new star.
The mercurial Cage has evidently been acting strange towards the project since he came on board; he was scheduled to play the estranged husband in the project, but two weeks ago, decided he actually wanted to play the villain. The husband role was then offered to Liev Schreiber (although there’s no indication if the actor was on board at this point). The film has a $35 million budget and Cage was supposed to get a nice $7 million paycheck. It’s possible the film will be scrapped and then lawsuits will ensue (fun for the guy who already owes millions to the I.R.S.).
Millennium were also behind the Cage films “The Wicker Man,” and the upcoming “Drive Angry,” but it appears its more of personal issue for the actor himself. One could say Cage also bailed on “The Green Hornet” recently, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate. The star was in talks with Gondry, Sony and Seth Rogen to play the villain role, but he decided against the turn (apparently because they weren’t so keen on Cage’s baffling idea to make the character Jamaican), and Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) took the part instead.