Nic Cage has always been Hollywood’s biggest comic book fan – his stage name comes from Luke Cage, noted anal sex buddy of Marvel Comics superheroine Jessica Jones. He was attached to star in Tim Burton’s Superman movie, a film that would have certainly been more rousing than Bryan Singer’s, as it would have at least been weird as hell. When that fell apart, Cage was doomed to take on third tier heroes, and he’ll be starring in the truly woeful-looking Ghost Rider movie next year.
But a C-list character wasn’t enough for Cage. He had to go back to the comics, this time opting for a character no one ever heard of published by a comic book company no one cares about. Now, after all that bitterness you might think I would shit all over the movie he’s signed on for, but I have to admit that the basic concept sounds interesting. The title is The Sadhu (they’re so changing that), and it’s about a colonial-era soldier who travels to India and ends up becoming a spiritual warrior. The comic, created by Deepak Chopra’s son Gotham (I think his brother, Keystone City, is the letterer) draws on Indian mythology, according to Variety.
The big screen version of The Sadhu is being written by Gotham’s dad, Deepak Chopra, who seems to have escaped the Self Help and New Age sections of book stores in order to appear with Grant Morrison at Comic Con this summer.
The Sadhu is one of the many new ventures from gajillionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Comics line, which is apparently created in sweatshops in India. This is true, except for the sweatshop part, which I am just assuming. Cage is pretty involved with Virgin Comics – he and his son Weston are doing a five issue series called Enigma, about a New Orleans voodoo-oriented superhero with a connection to a slave plantation revolt a century ago. Did someone say Shadowman?