Nicolas Cage’s John Madden Is Shockingly Good

2 min readNicolas Cage is in the game. Later this year, smack in the middle of football season, Amazon MGM Studios will release Madden, a new biopic starring Nicolas Cage as the late, legendary coach, commentator, and namesake for EA Sports’ billion-dollar video game franchise, John Madden. He died in 2021. On August 6, Amazon formally announced the movie’s release date of November 18 with a one-minute video of Cage speaking about Madden’s brilliance.The video also includes some additional glimpses at Cage’s performance as John Madden. While there hasn't been a full trailer yet, it’s not a stretch to think this could be one of Cage’s best performances in his second act. Does Cage actually look or talk like John Madden? Not really. But unlike a lot of recent and upcoming biopics, Cage doesn’t seem to be doing an SNL-caliber impersonation but instead a proper performance.You can watch the video featuring Nicolas Cage below.Here at Esquire, we’ve developed a bit of biopic fatigue. For every Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, there is a Michael or Tony or I Play Rocky in which real-life events are mined like comic book Easter eggs to make superfans point at the screen and say “I get it!”But Madden’s life wasn’t splayed out for the world to see on a big stage. He lived his greatness behind locker rooms and on the sidelines, coaching the Oakland Raiders to seven division titles and a win at Super Bowl XI. Then he became a color commentator and oversaw a huge video game franchise. All while the very game and culture around football shifted under his feet.How that all went down is ripe for a movie, at least one that your dad and uncles will ask about during Thanksgiving. “When’s it out?” they’ll ask. You’ll tell them it’s already out in theaters from Amazon, to which they’ll probably say, “I’ll wait for it on streaming.”But really, though, where is the actual trailer? We’ve got to see more Cage.