‘Madden’ teaser reveals first look at Nicolas Cage as NFL legend

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Film follows the football legend from Super Bowl glory to revolutionizing the video game industry with Madden NFL

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Published Dec 26, 2025 • 3 minute read

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Christian Bale and Nicolas Cage in ‘Madden.’ Photo by Amazon MGM StudiosArticle content

Football fans are getting their first look at Nicolas Cage as Super Bowl-winning coach and colour commentator John Madden in next year’s anticipated biopic on the NFL legend.

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Set for release next November, Madden is written and directed by David O. Russell (The Fighter, American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook and Amsterdam). The film will follow Madden’s career as a Hall of Fame coach for the Oakland Raiders as well as his transition into broadcasting and becoming the face of Madden NFL Football, one of the biggest-selling video game titles of all time.

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A synopsis on the YouTube video of the teaser reads: “Inspired by a true story, Madden follows the football legend from Super Bowl glory with the Raiders to revolutionizing the game with Madden NFL.”

Cage will be joined in the film by Christian Bale, who plays longtime Raiders owner Al Davis, as well as Kathryn Hahn (as his wife Virginia), John Mulaney (as Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins), Sienna Miller (as Carol Davis) and Shane Gillis (who will play an unnamed original character close to the Madden family).

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In his decade-long coaching career, he racked up a 103-32-7 regular-season record, and his .759 winning percentage is tops among NFL coaches with more than 100 games.

“People always ask, are you a coach or a broadcaster or a video game guy?” he said when elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I’m a coach, always been a coach.”

Madden is regarded as one of the best coaches in NFL history and was one of the most recognizable broadcast faces who commented on the sport. He appeared on TV until his retirement following the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 27-23 win over the Arizona Cardinals at Super Bowl XLIII in 2009.

He died at the age of 85 of an undisclosed illness in 2021.

Madden is honoured during the NFL’s annual Thanksgiving Day triple-header and was notorious for dishing out turkey legs and an awarding a “turducken” — a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey — to the MVP of the game he called on that day.

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Play VideoDirector hails Cage as ‘one of our greatest actors’

In a statement announcing the film back in 2024, Russell said that Madden will explore all facets of the beloved personality.

“Nicolas Cage, one of our greatest and most original actors, will portray the best of the American spirit of originality, fun and determination in which anything is possible as beloved national legend John Madden,” said Russell, who wrote the script after an earlier version was penned by Cambron Clark.

“Together with the ferocious style, focus and inspired individualism of Al Davis, owner of the underdog Oakland Raiders, the feature will be about the joy, humanity and genius that was John Madden in a wildly inventive, cool world of the 1970s.”

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Cage has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, winning one Oscar for his role in 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas.

He has veered between big-budget studio films (The Rock, Con-Air) and smaller indie projects (Longlegs). In 2022, Cage played a cash-strapped caricature of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Cage also won acclaim for his role as a renowned chef who hunts for his pig after she is kidnapped in 2021’s Pig.

Speaking to Postmedia in 2022, Cage called the role one of his best.

“I loved that movie. I think with that movie I finally had entered the room. That movie works on balance as a film, as a poem and as a folk song. I think the performance — for me — it was closest I got to what I like about Ernest Hemingway,” he said.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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‘Madden’ teaser reveals first look at Nicolas Cage as NFL legend

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