We’ve come to expect the unexpected from Nicolas Cage in both his personal and professional life, which has been encapsulated in spectacular fashion by this weekend’s acclaimed action comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where the actor plays a fictionalized version of himself caught up in a bizarre situation.
Given what we know about the Academy Award winner’s penchant for the outlandish and unusual, nobody should justifiably bat an eyelid after discovering Cage’s plans to build an $80 million movie studio in Las Vegas were thwarted by none other than Elon Musk.
Speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the 58 year-old revealed to the host that he’d secured state funding to put something back into a location he’s both left and honeymooned in at various points in his career, before Tesla came along and stole the cash from under his nose.
“There’s good mojo there for me. I tried to get a movie studio built there, and then Elon Musk came in, and all the money I got for the movie studio – I got $80 million — they put it into the Tesla cooperation. Which then, ironically, drained all the water out of the city. I almost had it.”
We can add this to the long list of Cage anecdotes that would sound far-fetched coming from almost anyone else in Hollywood, but are positively banal by the standards of a man who once got high on mushrooms with his cat, accidentally purchased a stolen dinosaur skull, and has a pet crow that likes to curse at him whenever he leaves the room.
