According to the Hollywood Reporter, Mandy star Nicolas Cage is currently in negotiations to headline a new film by the name of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a project snapped up by Lionsgate after a fierce bidding war with HBO Max and Paramount. Their description of the film is so goddamn insane, I'm just gonna quote the entire thing so you can experience the same brain explosions that I and the rest of the BMD staff just experienced:

"Cage, if deals close, would star as actor Nicolas Cage. The character is desperate to get a role in a new Tarantino movie while also dealing with a strained relationship with his teenage daughter. He also occasionally talks to an egotistical 1990s version of himself who rides him for making too many crappy movies and for not being a star anymore.

But wait, there's more:

The Cage character is also under a mountain of debt and finds himself forced to make an appearance at the birthday party of a Mexican billionaire who happens to be a fan of Cage’s work and secretly hopes to show him a script on which he’s been working. While he bonds with the man, Cage is informed by the CIA that the billionaire is actually a drug cartel kingpin who has kidnapped the daughter of a Mexican presidential nominee, and is recruited by the U.S. government to get intelligence. The situation spirals even more dramatically when the Mexican brings over Cage’s daughter and his ex-wife for a reconciliation, and when their lives are on the line, Cage takes on the role of a lifetime."

So, to recap: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent will feature Nicolas Cage playing Nicolas Cage (and, presumably, the "imaginary '90s friend" version of Nicolas Cage that Nicolas Cage occasionally speaks to), and he gets roped into a covert ops mission to rescue a Mexican presidential nominee's kidnapped daughter by the US government? Are you kidding me? This is the most Nicolas Cage-ass plot synopsis I've ever heard. It simply does not get more Nicolas Cage than this. I suppose you could throw a stolen Declaration of Independence in there, but at that point you might be overdoing it.

THR says Cage is poised to rake in a massive payday if he takes this gig, one that "would put him in the same range he was in when making such studio hits as Con Air and National Treasure." In other words, Nicolas Cage is absolutely doing this movie, it's just a matter of when: as we recently learned, he's got the bonkers-sounding Wally's Wonderland on deck, and that's shooting in January.

Nothing further to report at this time but, uh, rest assured we'll be obsessing over this in the meantime, and will provide you with updates as they roll in.

What a time to be alive.