Nicolas Cage Gets Sports Legend Biopic Lead

Nicolas Cage certainly doesn’t look much like John Madden, but it’s not hard to imagine the actor doing a great job of portraying the boisterous and humorous football legend.

It’ll also be interesting to see Cage portray the many interesting facets of his career, as Madden has one of the most unique stories in the NFL. He rose to fame as head coach of the Oakland Raiders and helped lead the team to a Super Bowl win, but he stunned the world by retiring due to burnout despite being at the height of his career.

His passion was in teaching football and bringing it to the masses, and he found an unusual outlet to do so when Electronic Arts sought him out to be the face of their new football video game. While he had never played video games himself, he viewed it as an opportunity to spread his knowledge of the game, and it ended up becoming one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, which is still running to this day.

Presumably, we’ll get to see Nicolas Cage navigating the world of video game marketing as Madden in the sports biopic, which already makes it a lot more unique than other sports biopics out there.

Of course, Nicolas Cage will undoubtedly also get to portray the broadcasting part of Madden’s career, which is something most NFL fans will remember fondly. While there are plenty of people who know Madden from his video games, there are numerous NFL fans who have heard his voice alongside Bob Costas and Pat Summerall.

Madden provided color for many broadcasts and his unmistakable voice and humor brought a potent combination of in-depth knowledge and levity to football games, as Madden would frequently use a pen to draw overlay on the telestrator to explain plays.

Nicolas Cage will lead the John Madden biopic, while David O. Russell directs from a script he wrote based on an early draft by Cambon Clark. Todd Black produces the film alongside Escape Artists’ Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch, and Jonathan Shukat. Matthew Budman and Russell are also on board as producers.

Nicolas Cage is the first major cast member announced for the Madden biopic, but we’ll undoubtedly hear more about more superstars in the film soon, as David O. Russell always attracts a big-name cast. In the meantime, this film should add to Cage’s recent hot streak of films like Longlegs, Pig, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

As for other upcoming projects, Cage is set to reprise his role as Spider-Man Noir in his own TV series and will presumably play the character again in Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider Verse.

Source: Deadline