Seth Rogen is currently promoting his Hilarity For Charity Netflix special, which he hopes will become the new Comic Relief in terms of raising Alzheimer’s Disease awareness. As such, Rogen sat down for a wide-ranging new Vulture interview in which he expresses doubt that The Interview was the cause of the Sony hack (and that North Korea was responsible). And there’s also an crazy tidbit about the Green Hornet casting process, which almost ended with Nic Cage playing the film’s villain, Bloodnofsky.
The role of the antagonist — a mobster who became a supervillian after a midlife crisis — of course, went to Christoph Waltz. Yet Rogen revealed how the studio really wanted to cast Cage, but he wanted to play the role as a “white Bahamian or Jamaican.” Yep, and there was a messy dinner meeting:
“Yeah, not that there aren’t white Bahamians, but it seemed perhaps insensitive. So then we were going to have a big dinner with Nicolas Cage at Amy Pascal’s house to talk about the movie. And I remember driving to the dinner with Evan and saying, ‘If he does the white Bahamian thing at the dinner, I’m going to lose it.’ [Laughs.] I was like, ‘I can’t deal with being face-to-face with Nicolas Cage as he’s doing a Bahamian accent’ …. Within 20 minutes of getting to the dinner he’s fully doing it.”
Rogen then revealed that Cage actually did a pretty “good” accent, but he bolted in the middle of the meal after gathering that everyone wasn’t keen on him playing the role in such a potentially problematic way. Yet Rogen insists that he’s still a “huge fan” of Cage, but this meeting of the minds wasn’t in the cards.
So, we missed out on Nic Cage losing his mind onscreen in this particular role, which is a shame in a sense, but Christoph Waltz is a treat whenever he’s onscreen, so it worked out okay. Chances are also slim for Rogen to ever be involved in the “gritty” reboot that may still be planned for the Green Hornet franchise. The new project shall be helmed by The Accountant director, Gavin O’Connor, in what will supposedly be a less campy take on the story … so, it sounds like Cage is out of luck there, too.
(Via Vulture)