Old black magic ... Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage).
Perennial Hollywood oddball Nicolas Cage hopes to enchant young audiences with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, writes Donna Walker-Mitchell.
As Nicolas Cage pored over The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a film he was largely responsible for bringing to the big screen, the search was on to find a director who would understand the actor's quirky ways.
"Are you politely saying I'm weird?" Cage laughs as he poses the question to Metro.
To help guide him through the fantasy film, Cage chose Jon Turteltaub, a director with whom he worked on two National Treasure films, in 2004 and 2007.
"He balances me out," Cage says. "I have a darker, edgier approach. He likes to keep things in the fun zone, so it's a good mix."
Cage, 46, says he is happiest when things aren't cookie-cutter perfect and Turteltaub understands that.
"Wasn't it Hunter Thompson who once said: 'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro'? I feel like when the going gets weird, I'm very comfortable with it," Cage says.
Perhaps because of his unconventional ways, Cage remains one of Hollywood's biggest box-office draws. He is one of Tinseltown's highest-paid actors and earned $US40 million last year, according to Forbes.
His latest film is based loosely on the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment in Disney's Fantasia, the 1940 animated film directed by Walt Disney that features eight segments set to classical music. The modern-day The Sorcerer's Apprentice is set in Manhattan, where Cage plays 1000-year-old sorcerer Balthazar Blake, who is fighting against evil and searching for a person who will inherit the powers of Merlin, the legendary wizard who was killed in AD740.
Cage says he wanted the film to hold the same magical appeal he felt as a child when he first watched The Wizard of Oz.
"I remember seeing that as a boy and I thought, if we can get anywhere close to that, I would be happy. We wanted to present a magical world to audiences.
"This was at a time where it became increasingly important to me to make movies that could entertain the whole family without having to rely on murder, guns and things like that," says Cage, whose son Kal-El turns five in October.
When the actor was looking for an offsider to play his apprentice, Jay Baruchel was his first choice.
Baruchel thinks he knows why.
"He and I are kind of cut from the same cloth," Baruchel says. "We both march to the beat of our drum and we're kind of outsiders. We both love the same comic books, music and we love a lot of the same movies for the same reasons. Nic does have a unique presence."
Playing the apprentice, Dave, Baruchel smiles as he says his character sometimes reminds him of himself in high school.
"I carried a knife on me throughout all of grade 8. I got my arse kicked . . . but nothing like Dave in The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
Director Jon Turteltaub Stars Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer Rated PG.
but in a different way to Wizard of Oz..think they would have had to go for a far more trippy and psychedelic dream like quality, which is what I find so alluring about it...
