Early reviews of the Nicolas Cage-starring Longlegs have called it the most terrifying horror film of 2024, but what's even scarier to the actor is Hollywood's embrace of artificial intelligence.
Cage, who has previously called the technology "inhumane," explained his fear in a recent conversation with The Orchid Thief author Susan Orlean for The New Yorker. Of course, the Cage-led 2002 comedy-drama Adaptation was based on Orlean's 1998 nonfiction book.
Toward the end of their chat, Cage explains to Orlean that following the interview, he'll undergo a scan of his likeness for upcoming Prime Video production Noir — a live-action Spider-Man series — followed by another scan for an unnamed film he'll be acting in following the series: "Two scans in one day!"
Asked about the process by Orlean, Cage explains, "Well, they have to put me in a computer and match my eye colour and change — I don't know. They're just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital AI ... God, I hope not AI. I'm terrified of that. I've been very vocal about it."
Cage agrees with Orlean that the potential ramifications of Hollywood using AI are "really scary," sharing, "It makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up? Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where's the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I'm dead? I don't want you to do anything with it!"
Orlean also points to the myth-making — meme-making, even — that surrounds Cage, to which he responds, "I used to be in control of that. I don't think I'm in control of that anymore."
"When I signed up to be a film actor, we didn't have the internet. We didn't have cell phones with cameras. I didn't know this was going to happen to me in such a pervasive way — the so-called memes. So that, now, is out of my hands ... I have to figure out how to surf that. I've been living with it now since 2009, I guess."
Asked about the year by Orlean, Cage recalled, "Well, that's when I turned on my computer and saw 'Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit.' [Laughs.] I was, like, 'Okay, wait a minute. You're taking all my characters and my freakout moments, and you're putting them all in this collage without any idea of how the character got there, without Act I, Act II, Act III. You're just watching these freakout moments, and you think it's funny — and that's great, because it is funny. And maybe you'll go look at the movie. But there's a reason why that character is acting like that. It's not only for laughs, you know?' ... I think all actors now have to be very careful who they talk to and where it's going."
While he shared late last year that he "may have three or four movies left in me," Cage did tell Orlean that he is still having fun acting. You can read their complete conversation for The New Yorker here.
Longlegs, in which Cage plays the titular serial killer being hunted by the FBI, arrives in theatres July 12.