I had high hopes for Prisoners of the Ghostland, Nicolas Cage's collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono, but I'm keeping my expectations in check after JoBlo's own Chris Bumbray, who saw the film as part of this year's Sundance Film Festival, gave it a 5/10 review. I'll still be watching the movie, but I'm not expecting it to be as awesome as I had been hoping it would be. I'll get to find out how well the film plays for me soon, as it has been announced that it's getting a theatrical release on September 17th.
Prisoners of the Ghostland has been described as a "delirious mash-up of Western, samurai, and post-apocalyptic thriller", and Cage has said it "might the wildest movie I've ever made, and that's saying something". Written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, the film is set
in the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town, where a ruthless bank robber (Cage) is sprung from jail by wealthy warlord The Governor (Bill Moseley), whose adopted granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within three days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman — and his own path to redemption.
Apparently Bernice has "disappeared into a dark supernatural universe", and if venturing into such a place while wearing a self-destructing leather suit weren't trouble enough for Cage's character Hero, Sono has also confirmed that "There are samurais, there are ninjas, and ghosts are part of the story as well."
Sono said he would leave it up to the audience to decide whether or not this is Cage's wildest movie, but if viewers "think that this is the wildest movie that he's ever made, the craziest movie that he's ever made, then I would be really really happy to hear that."
Cage, Moseley, and Boutella are joined in the cast by Tak Sakaguchi, Yuzuka Nakaya, and Nick Cassavetes.