Nicolas Cage Set To Play a Buffalo Hunter in Film Adaptation of BUTCHER'S CROSSING
Nicolas Cage has landed yet another movie role and he’s set to star in a film adaption of John Williams’ novel Butcher’s Crossing. He will take on the role of a buffalo hunter in the film, which is set to be directed by Gabe Polsky (Red Army).
The story “explores man’s relationship with the natural world and details a largely untold but significant chapter in American history.” Cage will play star play the Kansas buffalo hunter Miller, “who takes on a young Harvard dropout seeking his destiny out West. Together, they embark on a harrowing journey risking life and sanity.”
Here’s a description from the book:
It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.
Polsky said in a statement, “This is an urgent story with timeless themes — a gut-wrenching journey exploring the limits of human nature. Nick Cage is one of the most dynamic and interesting performers and to have him take on this brilliant role will be exciting.“
Producer Will Clarke added, “Altitude are incredibly excited about launching ‘Butcher’s Crossing’ at Cannes. John Williams’ story is strikingly cinematic and Gabe’s vision for the film is the perfect fit. Additionally, it’s fantastic to be working with the legendary Nick Cage whose passion and appeal is second to none.”
This is going to be yet another great project for Cage, who is constantly being cast in one crazy movie after another. Shooting on the film will begin in the U.S. in October.