Nicolas Cage Re-Teaming With Director Simon West For ‘Medallion’

In my opinion, one of the most fun and re-watchable action movies of the ’90s was Con Air, the Simon West-directed film starring Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames and a whole host of other recognizable faces. Now, 13 years later, Cage and West are teaming up once more for another action-thriller called Medallion.

Heat Vision reports that Cage is starring in Medallion, which is an action-thriller about a father – a former “master thief” – who only has a few hours to find his kidnapped daughter. Fairly standard plot, right? Well to add a bit of originality into the mix, the master thief’s daughter is locked in the trunk of a New York medallion taxi cab – a tricky puzzle considering New York City is full of them!

Medallion has been in the works for a while now, with actors such as Clive Owen and Jason Statham attached to star at various points (West instead got his chance to work with Statham in the upcoming remake of The Mechanic). The script for Medallion was written by US Weekly journalist-turned screenwriter David Guggenheim, whose script for Safe House ended up on the Hollywood Black List and is soon to be a film starring Denzel Washington.

Millenium Films is financing Medallion and is already shopping the “package” around to buyers. The project already has a group of producers including Matthew Joynes and Jesse Kennedy of Aurelius; James Holt (The Men Who Stare At Goats) and McG – yes, that McG – through his Wonderland Sound and Vision company. Exec producing are Avi Lerner, Danny Trevor, Cassian Elwes and Mary Viola (of Wonderland).

Although movie plots involving kidnapping are a dime-a-dozen, the immediate comparison is to the 2008 thriller Taken, starring Liam Neeson. Medallion‘s plot is indeed described as having “shades of Taken” but somehow I don’t see Medallion being quite as brutal.

It will be great to see Cage work with West again as Con Air was one helluva fun film. West hasn’t exactly continued to deliver that with his subsequent films – movies like The Man and When A Stranger Calls don’t exactly inspire confidence in his upcoming projects. We can only keep our fingers crossed that Medallion is one of his better directorial efforts.

No word yet on when we might see Medallion hit theaters. Cage can next be seen in the supernatural thriller Season of the Witch, which opens on January 7th, 2011, and then in Drive Angry 3D on February 25th, 2011.

Source: Heat Vision