Upcoming Nicolas Cage Movies To Keep On Your Radar

(Welcome to On Your Radar, a series where we take a look at what's next for the biggest actors and filmmakers, and why you should be excited ... or not.)

Currently boasting 109 credits to his name, Nicolas Cage is one of Hollywood's most prolific performers, and there's no signs of that slowing down anytime soon. 2021 was a big year for Cage with dynamic roles in both "Prisoners of the Ghostland" and his remarkable turn as a truffle forager on a rescue mission after his beloved and titular "Pig" is kidnapped. As for the future, Cage currently has five films in post-production, so there's plenty of (hopefully) quality Cage on the horizon. 

In Tom Gormican's highly-anticipated film "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," Cage plays an exaggerated version of himself dealing with some money troubles, so he accepts a million dollar offer to make an appearance at one of his wealthy fan's birthday party. Turns out this super fan (played by Pedro Pascal) is also a drug kingpin, and his request is that Cage act out some of his most famous roles. 

Cage himself has stated that, despite the rumors to the contrary, the film is pretty awesome, he himself will never actually watch it. The actor claims "it's just too much of a whacked-out trip for me to go to a movie theater and watch me play Tom Gormican's highly-neurotic, anxiety-ridden version of me." The film is due out April 22, 2022.

Ashley ("Twilight's" Ashley Greene) and her daughter Sarah (Thalia Campbell) find their lives at stake after they're caught up with a criminal enterprise. So she reaches out to her estranged father Matt (Nicolas Cage), who's currently spending his days as a retired beach dweller in the Cayman Islands. Tracked by the crime boss (Jackie Earle Haley) and his lieutenant Bobo (Ron Perlman) to the island, Ashley realizes there's more to her father's past than she ever could have imagined. Don't worry though, despite the title, Nic Cage isn't retiring, ever. There's currently no official release date, but the film is expected to arrive sometime in 2022.

Nicolas Cage is finally starring in a Western with 2022's "The Old Way." Directed by Brett Donowho from a script by Carl W. Lucas, the film finds Cage playing a former gunslinger named Colton Briggs, who now lives a quiet life with his family and runs a general store. After a gang of outlaws murder his wife in cold blood, the gunslinger's world comes crashing down, so he unearths his sidearm and saddles up with an unlikely partner: his 12-year-old daughter. 

It took over four decades for someone to finally put Cage in a Western, who expressed his excitement in the Deadline announcement about his long overdue venture:

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, and to find new ground to play at 57 is indeed galvanizing.

The film is currently in post-production and it definitely seems like Cage was bit by the Western bug because...

Following "The Old Way," Cage is starring in another Western, this time "Butcher's Crossing" from Gabe Polsky based on the novel by John Williams. Cage plays Will Andrews, an Ivy League dropout obsessed with the teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who winds up in a small town in Kansas called Butcher's Crossing where he comes across a community of relentless men looking for ways to make money. Andrews makes friends with a man who convinces him to join him on an expedition to track down herds of buffalo in the Colorado Rockies. The men find exactly what they're looking for, but they get so caught up in the brutal slaughter of buffalo that they lose track of time and find themselves trapped there through winter, pushing many of them into madness before they can try to make their way back to Butcher's Crossing in the spring. The film is expected out sometime in 2022.

In a casting decision that shocked many but also created great interest, Nicolas Cage was recently announced as having been cast as Count Dracula in "Renfield," the Universal Pictures spin-off starring Nicholas Hoult ("Mad Max: Fury Road," "Warm Bodies") as the titular submissive minion of everyone's favorite vampire. 

The film comes from Chris McKay, who is most well known for his work on "The LEGO Batman Movie" and "Robot Chicken." The script is coming from Ryan Ridley of "Rick and Morty," so it's difficult to figure out just what tone Universal is chasing with this team. Regardless, Nicolas Cage as Dracula is the casting decision of a lifetime, and we're all fortunate for getting to experience it.