Nic Cage says he tried to build a film studio in Vegas, until Elon Musk came along

Nicolas Cage as Nick Cage in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
Share this Article:

Nicolas Cage almost managed to set up a studio to get regular film production in Las Vegas up and running, until Elon Musk stepped in. 

Nicolas Cage is currently on the press tour for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and, being Nicolas Cage, he’s saying all sorts of interesting and zany things. One of our favourite stories that we’ve heard so far is the time when he tried to build a film studio in Las Vegas, the actor’s home town. Things were going well, and all of the required $80m of funding had been secured… until Tesla owner Elon Musk stepped in. Here’s the story in Cage’s own words:

“I’ve got good mojo there. 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 into the Tesla corporation, which then ironically drained all of the water out of the city. But I almost got it, I almost got a movie studio.”

Cage was chatting on The Jimmy Kimmel Show (via Variety), and among some other ‘Cage Legends’ he addressed, this one came up. The actor has a long-standing association with Las Vegas, having moved there for tax reasons before admitting “then I learned to love it.” Of course, Cage has also made several films about the city, including Honeymoon in Las Vegas and Leaving Las Vegas for which he won a Best Actor Oscar. “I’ve had great experiences making movies there,” he added. “Leaving Las Vegas was great. Honeymoon in Vegas is great.”

We’d quite like to hear more stories of Nic Cage battling other billionaire tech magnates. For an actor that loves Superman and came so close to playing him, the part about the billionaire genius, Musk coming in and taking the city’s water supply has more than a ring of Superman versus Lex Luthor about it.

Should we hear any more gems from Cage’s publicity tour, we’ll let you know. In the meantime, you can catch our review of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent here.

Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:

Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.

Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.

Become a Patron here.

Share this Article:

More like this