Nicolas Cage is set to play an iconic NFL coach in David O. Russell’s next film

Cage will play John Madden during his time coaching the Oakland Raiders.

By Joe Allen Published August 16, 2024

Nicolas Cage at the Renfield premiere. — Shutterstock

The Nicolas Cage resurgence continues. According to reporting at Indiewire, Cage, who just played the titular serial killer in Longlegs in a delightfully over the top performance, is now set to play NFL coach John Madden in director David O. Russell’s next film.

The film, which is titled Madden, is set up at Amazon MGM Studios, and Cage will play the legendary football coach in the 1970s, when he was coaching the Oakland Raiders. Madden would go on to a successful commentary career, and the popular video game franchise focused on the NFL takes its name from him.

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Further plot details for the film have yet to be revealed, so it’s unclear how much ground the movie may cover. Madden died in 2021, but had an outsized impact on America’s most popular sport.

“Nicolas Cage, one of our greatest and most original actors, will portray the best of the American spirit of originality, fun, and determination in which anything is possible as beloved national legend John Madden. Together with the ferocious style, focus, and inspired individualism of Al Davis, owner of the underdog Oakland Raiders, the feature will be about the joy, humanity and genius that was John Madden in a wildly inventive, cool world of the 1970s,” Russell said in a statement.

Russell wrote the original screenplay based on an earlier version by Cambron Clark.

Madden is one of several projects that Cage has lined up in the coming years. He’s working with Amazon on a live action version of his Spider-Noir character from the Spiderverse films, and he’ll also star in The Surfer, which first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

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Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…

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