Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent First Trailer: Nicolas Cage Plays Himself in Wild Meta Comedy

Who better to play Nicolas Cage in a movie than Nicolas Cage himself? That’s the question being put to the test in director Tom Gormican’s meta heist comedy “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” out from Lionsgate on April 22, 2022. The always outsized Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself in the upcoming film. Watch the trailer below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan (Pedro Pascal). Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative (Tiffany Haddish) and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones. With a career built for this very moment, the seminal award-winning actor must take on the role of a lifetime: Nicolas Cage.”

“[‘Nick Cage’] is an invented version of Nic Cage,” the Oscar winner recently told EW. “The character is feeling unfulfilled and contending with the rejection that can happen so often in the small town that is Hollywood. It’s not me. I’m feeling pretty good about things.”

The rest of the cast includes Neil Patrick Harris, Sharon Horgan, and newcomer Lily Sheen.

“It’s a stylized version of me, and the fact I even have to refer to myself in the third person makes me extremely uncomfortable,” Cage told Empire magazine in one of his first interviews about the upcoming project last year. “There are many scenes in the movie where modern or contemporary — here we go — ‘Nic Cage’ and then young ‘Nic Cage’ are colliding and arguing and battling it out. It’s an acrobatic approach to acting.”

Cage went on to say the movie “is definitely just me ‘taking the piss,’ as they say, out of myself.” While the characters Cage is playing in the film may be fictionalized versions of himself, the script from Gormican and Kevin Etten will pull from Cage’s real filmography. The actor says the film forced him to look back at some of his previous action gigs, as it required him to reenact certain scenes from his real movies — from which there are many gems to choose.

Cage most recently starred in the film “Pig” as a truffle hunter out for revenge, earning some of the best reviews of his career. Read IndieWire’s interview with the actor here.

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