Jack Black and Nicolas Cage Almost Starred in the Weirdest Musical of All Time
ComicBook.comStory by Lisa Laman
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Legendary screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's audacious musical project, featuring Jack Black and Nicolas Cage, never made it to the big screen despite its star-studded cast and bold vision.
beat sheet
- Kaufman's proposed project, 'Frank or Francis,' was set to be a scathing showbiz satire, with Cage playing a typecast actor and Black as an internet-dwelling movie blogger in a contentious relationship with a filmmaker.
- The film's ambitious concept, including an animatronic head designed to generate new movie ideas for studios, eerily presaged the rise of AI-driven creativity in Hollywood, making it a prescient, if unrealized, vision of the industry's future.
call sheet
Charlie Kaufman, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Steve Carell, Kevin Kline, Broadway, Hollywood, Frank or Francis