Moseley, Boutella, and more join Cage in Prisoners of the Ghostland

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Nicolas Cage is often able to find projects that sound completely amazing and fascinating on the page. The finished films don't always match up to the concept – for example, Cage battling a jaguar on a ship in PRIMAL sounded like an incredible idea, but our own Chris Bumbray only gave the movie a 6/10 review. Still, I support Cage's career decisions. Last year he signed on for another project that instantly caught my attention and interest, a post-apocalyptic thriller called PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND.

Filming begins this month on that project, which marks the English language debut of director Sion Sono, who has racked up more than fifty credits working in his native Japan for the last thirty years. Cage's character will be the 

notorious criminal Hero, who is sent to rescue an abducted woman who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe. They must break the evil curse that binds them and escape the mysterious revenants that rule the Ghostland, an East-meets-West vortex of beauty and violence.

Earlier this year, we had heard that Imogen Poots of GREEN ROOM, the FRIGHT NIGHT remake, and the upcoming BLACK CHRISTMAS remake would be joining Cage in the cast, but there's no mention of Poots being involved now that XYZ Films is presenting the project to potential distributors at the American Film Market. The names of a handful of other cast members have been revealed, though.

Joining Cage in PRISONERS OF GHOSTLAND are Bill Moseley, Ed Skrein, Young Dais, Tak Sakaguchi, and THE MUMMY herself, Sofia Boutella. Boutella will be playing the woman Cage has to rescue from Ghostland.

Moseley and Cage were both in the faux trailer Rob Zombie made for GRINDHOUSE, but they weren't on the screen at the same time. I really hope they'll have scenes together in this movie.

PRISONERS OF GHOSTLAND was written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, and this sort of sounds like a supernatural take on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Cage has said the script was 

unlike anything I've ever read before. It might be the wildest movie I've ever made, and that's saying something. It's out there. I wear a skintight black leather jumpsuit with grenades attached to different body parts, and if I don't rescue the governor's daughter from this state line where they're all ghosts and bring her back they're gonna blow me up. It's just crazy. It's way out there."

Safai is producing the film through his company Black Light District Entertainment, along with Untitled Entertainment's Laura Rister, Eleven Arts' Ko Mori, Nate Bolotin of XYZ Films, and Michael Mendelsohn of Patriot Pictures / Union Patriot Capital Management, which is fully financing the project.