Nicolas Cage's Perfect Batman Villain Can Revive 2 Lost Schumacher Plans
Nicolas Cage has inadvertently revived two abandoned Joel Schumacher Batman franchise plans by stating his desire to play an obscure villain in the sequel to The Batman. Cage's desire to play Eggman calls back not only to his near-casting in Batman Unchained, but also specifically nods to the villain Joel Schumacher had considered before changing his plans to feature Scarecrow. Recently, Nicolas Cage said he wants to join the Batman movie universe, and he has a "terrifying" concept for Egghead, a villain originally created for the 1966 Adam West Batman series.
Cage is no stranger to DC comics: he was previously cast as Superman in Tim Burton's canceled Superman Lives movie before finally getting to play the Man of Steel in Teen Titans Go!: To The Movies. He has also starred in other comic book movies, playing Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Big Daddy in Kick-Ass, and Marvel's Ghost Rider in two movies. He even named his son Kal-El after Superman's original alter-ego! The actor clearly knows his comics and comic book adaptations. Nicolas Cage playing a Batman villain would be a natural progression, and it almost happened for Batman Unchained.
Director Joel Schumacher was no stranger to a punny bad guy and he almost cast Nicolas Cage as Batman villain Scarecrow for his third Dark Knight movie. His second cinematic outing with the Caped Crusader, 1997's George Clooney-led Batman & Robin, notoriously features an outlandish performance by Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. This fourth film in the franchise was poorly received critically and failed to perform commercially in line with studio expectations. Because of this, Warner Bros. lost faith in a planned fifth feature. The sequel was being written by Mark Protosevich and would be directed by Schumacher once more, but it was abandoned in the studio's favor of going in a different direction, meaning neither the plan to bring Eggman to screen or the plan to cast Nicolas Cage as a Batman villain came off. The Batman 2 could right both of those wrongs.
Nicolas Cage's interest in appearing in the sequel to The Batman could thus resurrect two of the ideas from Batman Unchained. The scrapped film planned to return to the darker tone of Tim Burton's Batman movies. Scarecrow would team up with Harley Quinn —written as the Joker's daughter rather than his lover — to have Bruce Wayne incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. One scene would have seen hallucinations of villains including the Riddler and the Penguin putting Batman on trial for his various crimes. Schumacher offered the role of Scarecrow to Nicolas Cage before the film fell through. Interestingly, one of the other villains that Protosevich had considered including was Egghead, who Cage is now keen to play. In the unlikely event that Egghead appears, Cage's casting would finally combine two aspects of the abandoned Batman Unchained project.
Matt Reeves' The Batman honors the "World's Greatest Detective" take on the titular character, and so what better nemesis for him than Egghead, the World's Smartest Criminal? In the old TV series, Egghead worked out Batman's secret identity through deductive reasoning, which feels of a piece with The Batman's serial murder investigation. In the abandoned script for Batman Unchained, Scarecrow also figures out Bruce Wayne's secret identity, so it's easy to see how Egghead originally featured in Protosevich's thinking. The overarching story of Reeves' new Robert Pattinson-led movies appears to be about how Batman becomes Bruce Wayne, rather than the other way around. Cage as an Egghead in possession of Batman's true identity would make for an ideal nemesis for The Batman 2's Bruce Wayne story.
Nicolas Cage excels in deftly balancing wide-eyed mania with gravitas to give committed, compelling performances of seemingly ridiculous roles. On paper, a film like last year's Cage-led Pig sounds like John Wick meets Babe, but on screen it's a deeply moving story about the connections between food and memory. It's Cage's award-winning performance that sells that film's emotional core, and he could do something similarly memorable as Egghead. While The Batman teases yet another Joker, it would be incredibly refreshing for its sequel to, like the abandoned Batman Unchained, cast the net wider for some of the Dark Knight's more obscure, but equally compelling characters.