Nicolas Cage dumps Amazon over AI — Prime Video's latest purchase suggests it won't miss him
Nicolas Cage told New York Comic Con he won't sign away his face to Amazon. The same morning, Prime Video bought a film in which nobody's face is real. Nicolas Cage took the Empire Stage
Nicolas Cage told New York Comic Con he won't sign away his face to Amazon. The same morning, Prime Video bought a film in which nobody's face is real.
Nicolas Cage took the Empire Stage at New York Comic Con on Saturday 10 October, asked out loud "How do you survive AI?" and answered by burning a bridge with the company that had just cancelled his first TV series:
"Amazon is a very AI-friendly company to the tune of 50 billion dollars invested in OpenAI. I am not an AI-friendly actor… I didn't sign the waiver to let them use AI on Spider-Noir. I'm probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that's okay."
— Nicolas Cage, at New York Comic Con
The $50 billion is real, by the way: that is Amazon's share of OpenAI's latest funding round. Cage would rather work with Gen Z directors who are "doing it from scratch and by hand". Then he more or less confirmed he will lead the next season of HBO's True Detective: "My agent's out there somewhere listening. That's okay that I'm the first to announce that, right?" HBO has not commented.
The film with nobody's face in it
The timing was almost too neat. That morning, Prime Video took global rights to Çukur: Vartolu, a Turkish feature from Ay Yapım, the studio behind Endless Love. It spins off Çukur, known abroad as The Pit, and comes from AI Yapım, Ay Yapım's Singapore-based AI arm, which already put the AI-generated drama Castle Walls on Prime Video in August.
How the trick is done, in the studio's own words:
- The pictures: "Every frame of the film was generated with AI, from the characters' faces to every setting."
- The people: actors performed the scenes, and AI drew the characters over "their movement, timing and expression".
- The voices: "All dialogue was recorded by human voice actors."
So the actors are still on set. Their faces just stay at home.
Cage refused to sign away his face. The studio he's leaving has started buying films where the faces come from a machine.
In 2024, rushing off to be scanned for Spider-Noir, Cage told The New Yorker exactly what he was afraid of: "They're just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital A.I." Two years on, Prime Video is paying for films built that way. Cage didn't need a crystal ball. He needed a calendar.
Read more: Warner Bros. decided Batgirl wasn't worth releasing. The boss who binned it just made $606 million
Spider-Noir, cancelled anyway
Spider-Noir premiered on 27 May, opened at No. 2 on Nielsen's US streaming chart with 851 million minutes viewed and picked up 11 Emmy nominations, the most of any Prime Video series this year. On 4 September Amazon cancelled it after one season anyway. Cage's statement to Deadline was a model of grace: "For me, one season is perfect… Onwards, upwards, inwards."
Nor is Amazon the only streamer at it: in Busan, a senior Netflix production director has just said the streamer used AI "in one form or another" on some 300 titles. One Deadline commenter tried to tell Cage to adapt or die, and another replied: "Yeah, what would Nic Cage know about Adaptation!" Fair enough. He was Oscar-nominated for playing two screenwriters in it.
There is one small snag in the big exit. Cage's next film is Madden, David O. Russell's biopic with Cage as John Madden and Christian Bale as Al Davis, and it's made by Amazon MGM. It streams on Prime Video from 18 November. "Probably not going to be working with that studio again" will have to wait until after the press tour.