Looks like Nicolas Cage is finally ready to put down the crazy juice and stop providing internet lurkers with new memes, as his next project will be less baffling from a casting point, and more serious in tone.
Richard “No one wants to give me cash to make Corpus Christi” Kelly has something else up his sleeve, a true-crime thriller by the name of Amicus, and he’s tapped Cage to take the lead role in it.
Cage will be taking on the part of real world lawyer Rodney Smolla, a man who was brought in to defend the Paladin Press book publishing company, after several families sued the publisher for printing a murder manual that was attributed to the deaths of loved ones.
The book in question, Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, was used by James Perry as reference material, when he attempted to kill record producer Lawrence Horn’s wife, quadriplegic son and family nurse, under orders from Horn himself. Had Perry succeeded, he would have walked away with a cool $2 million in cash from a trust fund set up for his son, but cops caught Perry in 1995, sentencing him to death. Horn himself, is still serving a life sentence.
But Perry did commit several murders, and when the families of the dead discovered that Perry had been doing some reading up with the Hit Man manual, they sued the publisher, in a bizarre court case that went on for over five years, with Smolla eventually arguing it down to a settlement figure.
Kelly is looking to start shooting next year January, in Atlanta. Hopefully this project, will actually get out of development hell.
Last Updated: September 27, 2012
