‘Master of None’ created a fake Nicolas Cage movie. Maybe Netflix should make it real.
Earlier this week everyone’s favorite critic Christopher Campbell suggested I write about Death Castle. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but that’s no surprise because nobody ever knows what Christopher is talking about. He quickly got me caught up to speed, however, and I now realize he was referring to the sixth episode of the second season of Master of None — I’m really bad with watching TV so at the time I hadn’t seen it yet.
After learning about it I watched the episode which is about the lives of different New Yorkers who all cross paths at a screening of a new hit movie called Death Castle. This fictional movie within the show stars Nicolas Cage, Emma Watson, and Tyrese Gibson. Throughout the entire episode, each person makes reference to this new movie and how excited they are to see it. We never really learn what the movie is about but we know it has a twist and that twist involves Cage and Gibson being the same person. We overhear this reveal while seeing the shocked faces of the audience. During the twist Cage is voiced by Andy Samberg which is great, but I do wonder if Cage was approached about this — seems like something he’d be game to do. The only other piece of information we get about Death Castle is from a poster that is reminiscent of something from Hammer’s House of Horror and contains the tagline, “Everyone is dying to get out!”
This isn’t the first fake movie with Cage, of course. Back in 2007 when Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to make Grindhouse they brought in a number of their favorite directors to make trailers for fake movies to go between the two features. Rob Zombie delivered his love letter to Nazploitation with Werewolf Women of the SS and Cage starred as Fu-Manchu, the Chinese supervillain portrayed previously by the likes of Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee.
“I would still love to make it,” Zombie told SciFiNow back in 2013, “but it is probably never going to happen because I do not own the rights. The whole Grindhouse thing is owned by Dimension.”
This got me to thinking about what a possible Death Castle movie starring Cage would be like. Netflix could make it and it would fit with their current pattern of pushing out original content. And it would be a tie-in with a property they already own, that has to be a bonus, right?
While Master of None is pretty vague about Death Castle I think they give you enough to build on. I like the idea of Death Castle being something in the vein of the old Hammer films because the poster that already exists screams Hammer. I’m talking about slow crawl horror in a gothic setting with a constant eerie vibe that is building towards a twist. Let Cage and the other actors deliver big, drawn out performances and then have a Mission Impossible style reveal. You could likely do this all on a small budget that would preserve that Hammer vibe and work as an added bonus for Netflix.
The plot basically writes itself. Watson and Gibson are a recently married couple and they get word that a great-aunt of Watson’s has recently passed. In the aunt’s will she leaves Watson her castle but in order for Watson to receive the castle she must go out to the English countryside and claim it within one week of her aunt’s death. Watson isn’t going to allow a good castle to go to waste so her and Gibson quickly pack their bags and grab the next flight to merry old England!
Upon arrival, they are greeted, separately, by the castle’s caretaker played by Cage. Everything seems fine and dandy at first but slowly weird and creepy things begin to happen. As it turns out Cage gets great power from the castle but in order for that power to be given the castle must eat. The problem is the castle is a picky eater and only eats young women born on the Winter Solstice on their 30th birthday. Watson was born on the Winter Solstice and news of this mysterious aunt’s passing comes seven days before her 30th. That timing is…interesting.
This would be a great movie, right? I’d move it to the top of my queue. Netflix, Aziz, give me a call. Let’s make this happen.
Related Topics: Nicolas Cage
