NEW YORK, Oct. 11 (UPI) — Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas, National Treasure and Con Air icon Nicolas Cage says he wants to continue to evolve as an artist, but refuses to compromise his integrity in the name of technical progress.
“I’m trying to find a way of surviving with film performance in a very different world that is growing exponentially with so much information, so quickly,” Cage, 62, told the crowd at New York Comic Con Saturday.
“How can you become relevant as things are moving so fast? So, I’m still looking for that and I don’t really have an exact answer,” he explained.
“How do you survive A.I.? Amazon is a very A.I.-friendly company, to the tune of $50 billion to OpenAI. I am not an A.I.-friendly actor, so connect those dots. I’m not a member of their club. I didn’t sign the waiver to let them use A.I. on Spider-Noir, so it’s kind of like I’m probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that’s OK.”
Cage is now looking to collaborate with Gen Z directors who strive to maintain humanity in their storytelling.
“They’re going at it their own way. Whether it’s through the YouTube culture or whatever it is, they’re doing it from scratch and by hand,” he said. “I want to get with that.”
The prolific actor — whose credits include Valley Girl, Wild at Heart, Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck, Gone in Sixty Seconds, The Rock, The Croods, Face/Off, Adaptation and The Family Man — also said he is planning to make fewer movies in the future.
“Necessity is the mother of invention. You can connect those dots, too. What do I mean by necessity? Feed the family and don’t do too many movies back to back to back. So, I think I’m probably going to do another season of television,” he said.
“I think I might do a season of True Detective,” Cage added. “That’s OK. I’m the first to announce that, right?”
He then joked that director Jon Turteltaub recently “got a microphone in his hand” in Philadelphia and unexpectedly announced that a third National Treasure movie was in the works, nearly 20 years after National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets was released, and that Cage was returning to star in it.
“I’m like, ‘No, I didn’t sign up for that.’ You’ve got to get these microphones out of these directors’ hands,” Cage said. “We’ll see if I want to get together with him.”
“It’s either the Epstein files or it’s Atlantis,” he quipped about possible history mysteries for his character to solve. “That would be relevant. I’ll make that movie. Ben Gates is going after the Epstein files and the survivors will be justified.”