Nic Cage and John Travolta ready their next overacting extravaganza

UPDATE: According to our sources, director John McTiernan is still the director of the film below, SHRAPNEL. After McTiernan’s sentencing last fall, the film’s producer publicly stated as much. As for the legal situation, McTiernan is currently free with his appeal pending. The timetable of that appeal — which was recently extended even further — allows plenty of time for the production of the film with no conflict.

Nicolas Cage and John Travolta infamously teamed up for the 1997 action film FACE/OFF. At the time, I actually enjoyed it for all its campy, hammy, John Woo charm. I’ve watched it since and I’m not sure that I appreciate it as much anymore (back in 1997 it was almost novel to see such A-listers going over-the-top so wildly but they’ve been doing it almost consistently since then). But there is some inherent interest on my part to see what would happen if you reunited Cage and Travolta. Would creators of snarky internet montages explode with excitement?

It looks as if Cage and Travolta are indeed eyeing another turn at outdoing each other with the indie thriller SHRAPNEL. The film would star the two actors as war veterans hunting each other in the woods. The script was written by Evan Daugherty and is described as DELIVERANCE meets a “cabin in the woods” style horror film. What’s interesting about the project is that it has only two characters and they’d be played by Cage and Travolta.

At one point John McTiernan, he of DIE HARD and PREDATOR fame, was attached to direct but then he had to go and get convicted of perjury and is still facing a year in jail so it’s unlikely he’ll be behind the camera. Why not Tony Scott? If you’re going to unleash Travolta and Cage in a forest and let them chew the scenery, why not get a director who overdirects? Just make everything hyper real.