Nicolas Cage to battle cannibals in Parish

Nicolas Cage will battle vicious cannibals as one of the few survivors of a nuclear apocalypse in upcoming thriller Parish.

Nicolas Cage will battle vicious cannibals in post-apocalypse thriller Parish.

The 62-year-old actor leads the cast of writer-director Adam Sigal’s next movie, portraying one of the last known survivors of a nuclear apocalypse who finds himself forced into a “brutal fight” to protect all that he still has to hold dear.

According to Deadline, the description of the film says Nicolas will play “a hardened survivor who has managed to stay alive with his highly trained attack dogs by following one unbreakable rule: never let anyone through the gate. “

The synopsis continued: “That rule has kept him alive for three decades.

“But when a desperate woman carrying an infant appears outside his sanctuary, Parish is forced to choose between compassion and survival. His decision exposes the refuge he has spent years building and puts him in the crosshairs of a vicious band of cannibals closing in from the wasteland.

“With his highly equipped compound under siege and his past finally catching up with him, Parish is forced into a brutal fight to protect everything he has left.”

Filming is being lined up for October in Minnesota, with Concourse Media executive producing and financing alongside their sister company Archetype Media Finance.

Matthew Shreder, CEO of Concourse Media, said: “There’s a scale and pedigree to Parish that immediately separates it from the pack, with all the ingredients of a real theatrical event.

“Nic Cage is an incredible and fearless actor, with an extraordinary group of filmmakers around him who are all setting out to make a sophisticated survival thriller that’s a cinematic event built for a global audience.”

Producer Joel Shapiro of MagiCity Studios added: “Adam has created a world that is savage, cinematic and incredibly visceral, but what drew us to Parish was the humanity underneath it.

“Nic Cage brings an unpredictability and emotional intensity that makes him perfect for this character. And to be building this world alongside artists like [cinematographer] David Tattersall is incredibly exciting. We’re approaching this as a big-screen experience from the ground up.”

Meanwhile, Nicolas recently insisted he doesn’t have a preference when it comes to playing heroes or villains.

He told People magazine: “Villain? I’ve played plenty of villains. I like both. I think they’re both important parts of cinema. I would not want to get trapped into doing one thing.”

Nicolas also reflected on turning down the chance to play Green Goblin in the Spider-Man series in the early 2000s, a role which subsequently went to Willem Dafoe opposite Tobey Maguire as the web-slinging super hero, in favour of starring in Adaptation because that felt like the “right choice at the time”.

The actor – who was subsequently nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Adaptation – said: “I decided to do another movie, a much smaller noir of sorts, more romantic than tragic noir.

“But I remember saying to Sam [Raimi, director], ‘I hope whoever you cast [as Spider-Man] really embraces the arachnid body language, at least for one moment. Alone in his apartment, he’s crawling on the ceiling or something.”