It was a story that would make any self respecting geek shake his or her head. Yes, when Nicholas Cage became a big time movie star, he finally had the loot to buy a geekholy grail, the first issue of Superman.
Unfortunately it was stolen from his house, and then recovered when discovered in a purchased storage locker. The sale broke the record for comics when it finally went up for auction last November for a cool $2.1 million.
Now the comedy writing team of Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are turning the Cage comic book tale into a comedy tentatively dubbed Action No. 1 for Lionsgate.
As The Hollywood Reporter tells us, it’s going to be a heist comedy, but instead of master criminals, we’ll see a gang of geeks go on a mission to steal the first issue that features the Man of Steel.
Of course, Nicholas Cage will be a character in the film, although there’s no word yet whether he’ll actually play himself or not. There’s also been speculation he may be played by Jason Statham, which is amusing casting as well.
Truthfully, Staham would probably do a better job too, considering Cage hasn’t put in a decent performance in God knows how long.
This is definitely a funny idea for a movie with a pretty catchy title, and it should make a funny flick in the right hands, which plenty of inside jokes for the geeks. As the Reporter also points out, this is not the first time there’s been a geeks on a mission for the holy grail story has made the rounds in Hollywood. There was also Fanboys and an un-produced screenplay called Comic-Con, which apparently was about a group of geeks pulling off a heist so they could save their favorite comics store from going under.
As we often say here on TG, the geeks will not be denied, and if this film starts a trend, you could do a comedy about a group of master computer geeks trying to access the Warner Brothers computer for the last Batman script, a la WarGames, or someone trying to sneak off the lone copy of Episode One that Lucas never let out of his site off for duping at Kinko’s.
