The release date for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent — the very meta film about Nicolas Cage, starring none other than Nicolas Cage — was pushed back earlier this year, and it’s now set to hit cinemas in April 2022. When it does finally arrive, however, the actor himself will be notably absent from the audience.

Directed by Tom Gormican, the film stars Cage as a fictionalised version of himself who has gone broke and faces massive debts. In an effort to pay off some of the money he owes, he accepts $1 million to attend the birthday of a rich superfan (who is also, incidentally, a member of a Mexican drug cartel).

Obviously, things take a turn for the worse as Cage is recruited by the CIA to gather intelligence, while striving for a part in Quentin Tarantino’s next film and facing off against an egomaniacal version of himself from the 90s.

In a recent interview with Variety, however, Cage claims that he’ll never watch the finished product, simply because it would be “too bizarre” (and that’s saying something, coming from the star of Wild At Heart).

“I will never see this movie,” Cage says. “I’m told it’s a good movie. I’m told people love it and are enjoying the ride, but I made that for the audience. It’s too much for me to go to the premiere and sit there with everybody.”

“Psychologically, that’s too bizarre and whacked out for me,” he adds.

Unfortunately, Cage also won’t get chance to see himself as Joe Exotic in the previously-announced Tiger King drama at Amazon, which appears to have fallen through due to the fact that people’s interest in the exotic zookeeper has waned (though a Kyle MacLachlan-starring series is still in production).

“We should clear the record,” Cage says of the Tiger King show in a separate interview with Variety, published earlier this week. “I read two excellent scripts, which I did think were excellent, but I think Amazon ultimately felt that it was material that had become past tense because it took so long for it come together.” 

“They felt at one point that it was lightning in a bottle, but that point has since faded into the distance and it’s no longer relevant.”