Though his film and TV career is extensive and varied, Academy Award-winner Nicolas Cage doesn’t do all that many sequels. Across his filmography, there are only a few character reprisals, such as playing Benjamin Franklin Gates across the two National Treasure movies, Johnny Blaze in the two Ghost Rider films, and voicing Grug Crood in The Croods. In the future, he’s set to return to the role of Spider-Man Noir not only for his own Prime Video TV series, but also for the Beyond the Spider-Verse movie, with plans for Face/Off 2 routinely being announced and subsequently shelved.
This afternoon brings us the surprising reveal that not only is Nicolas Cage making a rare sequel to one of his hit movies, but it’s probably the last one that anyone would have guessed. The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Cage will reunite with writer/director Osgood Perkins for a follow-up to 2024’s Longlegs, the occult horror movie that featured Cage as the titular serial killer. Not only is Cage’s return a surprising idea in and of itself, especially for plot reasons regarding the original film (spoilers will follow), but the report reveals a change in scope for the film and one that has resulted in a new studio backing the project.
According to the new report, the new film is not a sequel to Longlegs itself but is being described as a movie “set in the Longlegs universe.” As fans may recall, Cage’s elusive and bizarre character is, of course, the focal point of the movie, but in one of its many twists, Cage’s Longlegs dies about halfway through the film itself, taking his own life by bashing his head into a metal table repeatedly. It is worth pointing out, though, that the nature of Longlegs’ satanic crimes and the ending of the film itself leave the door open for someone else to carry on his work in some regard. Longlegs also implies that Cage’s character has been operating for decades, meaning a further exploration of his work could happen as a prequel of some kind, or perhaps he could influence someone from beyond the grave in the future (Longlegs is set in the ’90s, after all).
Another major change for the new Longlegs movie, though, is that original producers NEON have stepped aside. Instead, Paramount Pictures will produce and distribute the film, which has Cage tapped as a producer in addition to starring. According to the trade, NEON “stepped aside when the new project’s scope and budget exceeded” what they would normally produce, which is a more enticing tease for the film than its place in a “Longlegs universe.”
It’s not entirely surprising that a Longlegs follow-up would be considered despite the fate of Cage’s character in the original movie. Longlegs boasted a budget of $10 million but rocketed its way to over $128 million at the global box office, helped in part by the mysterious marketing campaign that NEON deployed to keep the hype and mystery around the film afloat. One of the biggest advantages that the movie had in its favor, which the sequel will be without, is that it hid Nicolas Cage’s character’s face from the marketing before it was released, pushing the mystery along in a way that few other films would ever dare.
The new Longlegs movie follows in the footsteps of the planned Weapons prequel movie from Zach Cregger and Zach Shields, which will focus on Oscar-winner Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys. Both movies went on to major success thanks to successful marketing campaigns that hid the real story of their movies, and even the performances of their stars, while keeping audiences curious about what was really going on in the films. Perhaps Cage returning to his character alongside Madigan signals a new trend in studio horror movies, with an emphasis being put back on the audience’s adoration for the antagonists in these movies, not unlike what happened in the 1980s with the likes of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees.
