Nicolas Cage Reuniting With Director of 28-Year-Old Cult Sci-Fi Film for New Gangster Movie

Nicolas Cage has appeared in countless movies in different genres over his career, but there are a handful that his fans hold up as the best of the best. Cage has now signed on to appear in a new movie by a director of one of his fan-favorite sci-fi action movies. It has been 28 years since Cage and this director worked together, and their reunion has fans excited, especially since Cage’s resurgence as one of Hollywood’s national treasures after almost two decades as a straight-to-video star. It is also a subject matter that might bring out the best in Cage and his director.

Nicolas Cage is set to reunite with Face/Off director John Woo for a new movie, 28 years after they last worked together. Deadline reports that the two will work on a new film called Gambino, about notorious New York City crime kingpin Carlo Gambino. The film will follow the rise of Carlo Gambino as he starts as a butcher’s son in Sicily and ends up ruling New York’s underworld.

George Gallo (Bad Boys franchise) and Oscar-winner Nick Vallelonga (Green Book) teamed up to write the script, and it is launching for sale this week at the American Film Market. Cage will play Carlo Gambino, as he ruled over New York’s underworld before his death, which sent shockwaves through the city. The story will follow a journalist named Jimmy Breslin, who interviews the people who knew and loved him as he sets out to show who Gambino really was. In real life, Gambino’s crime family ruled over New York for over 50 years.

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Nicolas Cage & John Woo Make for an Interesting Reunion

The most exciting thing about this new movie announcement is hearing that Nicolas Cage is re-teaming with John Woo to make the movie. Face/Off remains one of Cage’s most beloved fan-favorite action movies during his heyday in the 1990s. The film saw Cage play terrorist Caster Troy and John Travolta as FBI agent Sean Archer. However, when Caster ends up in a coma, Sean has a sci-fi procedure done to put Caster’s face on him so he can uncover a bombing threat. When Caster wakes up without his face, he demands that he have Sean’s face put on him and sets out to destroy the FBI agent’s life.

The movie was an excellent chance for Cage to add his over-the-top acting to a fantastically directed action movie by John Woo. This was Woo’s third American movie after making the move from Hong Kong to the United States, following Hard Target and Broken Arrow. However, he hasn’t done as much in America since Paycheck in 2003. He went back to Asia and didn’t return until 2023, when he directed action flicks Silent Night and a remake of his own movie, The Killer.

Re-teaming with Nicolas Cage is an interesting decision, and there is hope that John Woo can regain some of the brilliance that he exhibited with his early breakout movies, The Killer in 1989 and Hard Boiled in 1992. With the mafia theme, Woo doesn’t have to do much action-wise, but there is hope that he still brings his A-game, as Cage continues to prove he is still one of Hollywood’s most interesting actors.

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