Brian Henry

Nicolas Cage Projects Stalled in Development

Hollywood's anti-visionaries are at it again, keeping some of the most enticing

projects in town tied up in endless rewrites. Thanks to these sluggards, all of us
Cageheads out here in the Cage Fan Nation only saw one new Cage movie last
year. Any year without at least four new Nic pics is a year wasted. So get your
e-mails flooding into these stuffed shirts' offices so we can get our Nic-o-time
now!

FireHead - In this promising concept, an emotionally volatile, devil-may-care

detective suddenly acquires the occult power of turning his entire head into a ball
of seething flames. Soon Buck Firehead (Nicolas Cage) is roaring across the
country on his souped-up Segway, his head bursting into a weaponized inferno of
death at the slightest provocation. Cate Blanchett is under consideration to play
Rixette, the sexy, gritty biker chick who knows FireHead's darkest secret (that his
head often turns into a ball of fire).

Man With The Future Brain - A paranormal action thriller, this gonzo concept
tracks the tale of Professor Oscar T. 'Nostro' Damus (Nicolas Cage), whose
migraine-inducing visions of future events disturb his lectures when they appear
as extremely dramatic PowerPoint presentations on his classroom Smart
Boards. Damus, a volatile, emotionally high-strung, no-holds-barred, academic
maverick (with wacky thrift store shoes), tries to keep his prophetic powers secret
from wise and canny department chair Hirschorn Cleveland (Morgan Freeman).
But when his entire class sees his vision of humanity being incinerated by a band
of flaming Hellriders in an apocalyptic wave of fire outside the Reno city limits,
Damus must spring into action. Shia LeBeouf is on the short list of candidates to
play Damus' charming, but feckless, assistant, Ouija.

National Treasure III: Catacombs with Numerous Secret Passages - In this

projected sequel, currently in its fourth rewrite, we become reacquainted with
Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) lecturing on his best seller, "Building Your Own
Ridiculously Elaborate Cavernous Labyrinth", when he stumbles upon the fact
that secret crypts located under St. Louis are carved with hieroglyphics created
by Theodore Roosevelt in which the Rough Rider predicted a swarm of 21st
century plagues that would bring clouds of psychic, but still very hungry, locusts
down on the Plains States in herds of destruction. Gates is soon exploring the
crypts with new romantic interest, entomologist Shecky Dyerson (Amy Poehler, in
a rare dramatic turn) and exploding into volatile fits of disagreement with his
father via cell phone (whose voice goes unheard due to Jon Voight's unusual
compensation requirements).
 Brian Henry

FireManiac - Volatile, drunken con-man Ty Kibler (Cage), haunted by his three

failed marriages and the two Southeast Asian refugees he adopted then
abandoned to fend for themselves on a desolate Caribbean Island, is
transformed by an encounter in Las Vegas with Sinoa Lodilla (Halle Berry) a
sleek, but volatile, temptress who's a craps dealer by day and a Satanic
biker/whorehouse madam by night. When Kibler has inexplicable visions of
himself making maniacal love to Sinoa in an Egyptian temple lit by sensual
torches, he suddenly finds himself possessing the powers of FireManiac, a
leather-jacket-wearing hellion who shoots fatal jets of fire from his index fingers
at criminal wrongdoers. Jack Black is attached to portray Sinoa's charming but
sleazy pimp, Sleazeboy.

Devil Dice, Asshole!- Washed-up professional poker player and volatile,

emotionally distraught Las Vegas weatherman Troy Hellburner (Cage) gets a
chance to redeem himself when Thai opium smuggler Sweet Lip (Penelope Cruz)
hires him to waste her Chinese arch-enemies by strafing their fields with napalm
from a motorized hang glider. But when Troy's glider is shot down by former
Maoist general turned drug-dealer Ching Fick (Chow Yun-Fat), he becomes
enmeshed in a high stakes game of tossing small white dice where Satan
controls the odds and only Troy's willingness to sell his soul to a cackling
Chinese demon (Margaret Cho) can save Lip's opium harvest and redeem two
Chinese orphans who appear outside the hut sometime during the game.