Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly is known for working on the kind of über-complex material that seems explicitly designed to make one’s head spin, so it’s an understandable development that his next project will star head-spinner extraordinaire, Nicolas Cage.
The pair are set to team up on Amicus , a true-crime thriller based around the case of Lawrence Horn, a former record producer who hired a hitman to murder his entire family in order to inherit their fortune.
The film will be set around the 25 year period following the crime, charting Horn’s trial and the ensuing lawsuits issued by the victims’ families, one of which was aimed at the publisher of the “how to” book the killer apparently used.
Slightly surprisingly, Cage won’t be playing Horn or even the hitman, but rather Rodney Smolla, a third-party expert hired on behalf of the plaintiffs. Presumably that role will require him to rein in some of his more excessive performing tendencies… that said, this is Cage, so we could be mistaken.
The project is currently looking for financing, with production pencilled in for a January start date. Cage and Kelly, working together at last? Colour us intrigued.
