Nicolas Cage Will Make His First-Ever Western With The Old Way

Saddle up, buckaroos, for a bonafide Western with Nicolas Cage. There's nothing old about "The Old Way" in terms of how it will bring Cage's "Nouveau Shamanic" acting style to the Western genre.

Cage as a cowboy: why on God's green earth haven't we seen this kind of movie sooner?

Deadline reports that there are not one, but two Cage Westerns in development. "The Old Way" will shoot back-to-back in Montana with "Butcher's Crossing," another Cage-led Western, first announced back in June. It sounds like "The Old Way" will film and release first, with "Butcher's Crossing" set to follow right after it. The former is billed as an "action Western" and the latter is billed as a "frontier epic."

Screenwriter and producer Carl W. Lucas ("The Wave") penned the script for "The Old Way," and director Brett Donowho ("Acts of Violence") is helming it. Sales are underway at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Here's the synopsis for "The Old Way" via Deadline:

"In The Old Way, Cage will star as Colton Briggs, a former gunslinger who now runs a general store and lives quietly with his family. When a gang of outlaws murders his wife in cold blood, Briggs returns home to find his world burning. He unearths his sidearm and saddles up with an unlikely partner: his twelve-year-old daughter."

The synopsis for "The Old Way" makes it sound like a cross between "Mandy," Cage's stellar psychedelic horror film with Panos Cosmatos, and this year's "Pig," in which he plays a truffle hunter and ex-chef lured back into the Portland underground food scene as he seeks to recover his kidnapped hog.

Cage is all over the map with his acting sometimes, and his filmography is all over the map in terms of quality. He's not afraid to slum it in order to pay his back taxes (and purchase the requisite castles, islands, and dinosaur skulls that a celebrity needs), but "Mandy" and "Pig" both garnered significant acclaim, and in recent years, it feels like there's been a reappraisal of Cage or a renewed appreciation for him and some of his movies.

Cage had this to say about him finally donning a cowboy hat in "The Old Way:"

"After 43 years in cinema, I'm only now being invited to the important and storied genre of the Western with both 'The Old Way' and 'Butcher's Crossing.' Being born and raised in the West, this is another good match and long overdue. I'm excited and compelled by the complex characters of both Briggs and Miller [his character in 'Butcher's Crossing'], and to find new ground to play at 57 is indeed galvanizing."

Cage also has "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" on the way, which will recreate scenes from other movies he's starred in.