14 DAY TRIAL // Whether Nicolas Cage would ever return to a sequel to the critically-panned “Ghost Rider,” a project that he did because, as he put it, it was a character very close to his heart, is the ever-burning question – and has been so for many months. While at the beginning of the year, Cage was a go for the second film, in April, he’d already backed down. Now, NY Mag’s Vulture reports that the actor is back on board – but only because he’s dried up for cash.
In January this year, semi-confirmation came that Cage had said yes to the sequel and that producers were already looking for writers to handle the script for it. Then, in April, rumors started to pick up that Columbia needed to commit to the film or lose the rights over the story to Marvel, which meant it would go ahead without Nicolas, most likely. That was before the IRS filed a lien saying the actor owed over $14 million in back taxes.
“In mid-July, Nicolas Cage finally signed on to make a new Ghost Rider at Sony’s Columbia Pictures, even as the studio is hedging its bets and making a deal to sell off the foreign distribution rights to the film. Why? They need each other, but they probably don’t love each other. The Ghost Rider sequel is, perhaps, the perfect confluence of a studio desperately needing to do something to retain a franchise, and a star urgently needing a payday to recharge his sagging fortunes and reliability: bank and bank-ability, if you will,” Vulture also notes.
“Cage is coming off a flop in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and a particularly rough run with respect to his personal finances. […] Disney landed him for Sorcerer’s Apprentice – and what’s more, insiders tell us he’d already been forced to make it for half his usual quote, only $10 million. Insiders also tell us that Cage, needing to work to pay off his IRS debts and rebuild his fortunes, initially scoffed at Sony’s paltry $5 million offer to set his skull aflame once more,” the same e-zine goes on to say.
And that’s because he’d already been offered to star in “Tresspass,” opposite Nicole Kidman, Vulture further explains. Eventually, Columbia reconsidered the predicament it was in and returned with a new offer, for $7 million for Nic to be Johnnie Blaze again – Cage, on the other hand, was by this time so hard up for cash that he accepted it. Somewhere in the middle of all this are the fans of the comic book and the first film – to them, all that matters is that they’re getting a sequel, regardless of how that came to happen.
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