After months of will-he-won't-he, the results are finally in: he won't. Nicolas Cage, tipped as the villain in Michel Gondry's Green Hornet, has officially now declined, according to The Hollywood Reporter's 'Heatvision' blog, because "the actor and the studio were not able to come to terms on a deal".
With Cage also prepping Drive Angry and The Hungry Rabbit Jumps though, not to mention juggling producing and exec producing on a number of other projects, it seems likely that timing was also an issue. There's only so much one guy can handle, even if he is a Coppola.
So now the hunt begins for a new Mr X for Green Hornet, which has already started shooting, with, as you certainly already know by now, Seth Rogen, Jay Chou and Cameron Diaz. We suspect that hunt may not be too protracted: surely with shooting underway and Cage not actually locked in, Columbia had a Plan B up their sleeves...