'Prisoners of the Ghostland' has a scene so insane Nicolas Cage's manager wanted it cut from the movie

Warning: Prisoners of the Ghostland spoilers ahead.

Nicolas Cage wasn’t planning to provide the marketing team for his latest film, Prisoners of the Ghostland, a quote for the poster when he proclaimed it “the wildest movie I’ve ever made.”

But that’s saying something, given the last few years’ worth of bonkers entries in the “Cage Rage” subgenre that have included deliciously absurd and/or gore-soaked entries like Mandy (2018), Color Out of Space (2019) and Willy’s Wonderland (2021).

“I had read the script and I met with [director] Sion Sono, we didn’t even make the movie yet,” the beloved 57-year-old actor tells us during a recent virtual interview (watch above). “I said it in a magazine: This is gonna be the wildest script I’ve ever made. And that transmogrified into ‘the wildest movie I ever made.’ And I stand by that.”

The Western kabuki fantasy stars Cage as a hardened criminal in a dystopian future who’s given a shot at redemption when he’s tasked with saving the niece (Sofia Boutella) of a shifty Governor (Bill Moseley) from a creepy Mad Max-ian desert encampment.

To ensure Cage’s Hero doesn’t go off course (or engage in any sexual activity), Governor embeds his leather suit with detonators, including two attached to each of his testicles. Final spoiler alert… One of them detonates.

“Originally, they wanted to take that scene out, even my manager wanted to take it out,” Cage reveals.

“I was like, ‘Well, no, because, it’s kind of like what’s happening now. And these are dangerous waters but [with] sexual assault, you want to be very careful. You don’t want to offend people. You don’t want to treat women that way. And I think that scene is like a microcosm of [the issue of sexual assault]. It’s like, ‘Warning! Warning!’ That’s why I thought they should put it back in.”

At another point in the film Cage screams the word “testicle!” at the top of his lungs, with an all-in vociferous commitment only Nicolas Cage could pull off.

“I literally wanted to hit it out of the ball-park,” he laughs.

Prisoners of the Ghostland is now in theaters and on VOD and digital.

Watch the trailer:

— Video produced by Stacy Jackman and edited by Valerie Volpacchio