Nicolas Cage to Kick-Ass

Nicolas Cage has looked the same for a really long time. 

Last week Dave wrote about how the film adaptation of the comic Kick-Ass was getting ready to go, with with a cast that included Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Now The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson and Lindsay Fonseca have also signed on. Matthew Vaughn is directing.

The Mark Millar comic is about Dave Lizewski, a high school loser who decides to become a superhero despite having no athletic ability or coordination (not to mention no superpowers). Johnson will play Dave. Fonseca is the object of his affections who thinks he’s gay. Cage will play a former cop trying to bring down a drug lord. Cage’s character has a daughter, played by Chloe Moretz, who he’s trained to be “a lethal weapon” (THR’s words, not my description–what does it mean? Is she a nuclear weapon? poison?) . Mintz-Plasse is playing “the Red Mist,” the son of a gangster who’s trying to figure out Kick-Ass’s identity (hint: he’s the one with no coordination or athletic ability or superpowers, who girls think is gay).

Sometimes it seems like Nicolas Cage is never not working, doesn’t it? He’s either being announced for the cast of a film, dropping out of another or thinking about being in something else.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that Kick-Ass is being independently financed because studios were scared off by the graphic violence in the comic. Wait, in a world where there has been something like 5 Saw movies and two Hostels, studios were shrinking from violence. Okay, that makes sense.