EXCLUSIVENicolas Cage may end up on death row at Warner Bros., following the studio's purchase of a pitch for a prison thriller about capital punishment that is being set up under the Oscar-winning actor's Saturn Films production banner.
Cage and Saturn co-topper Jeff Levine will produce the noirish project, currently titled "The Life of David Gale." The project may serve as a starring vehicle for Cage.
The pitch came from an original idea created by Vienna, Austria-based philosophy professor Charles Randolph, who has been hired to pen the screenplay as well.
The story is described as a politically charged dramatic thriller set in present-day Texas and centering on a young philosophy professor who has vehemently lobbied against the death penalty. The story unfolds a la "Dead Man Walking" as the professor recounts his plight to a journalist from his seat on death row, where he has been sentenced for the brutal rape and murder of one of his anti-death-penalty activist colleagues.
Saturn development exec Norm Golightly is credited with bringing in the pitch, after he had read Randolph's comedic screenplay "Fat," which is being developed and produced by Addis-Wechsler and Associates.
The son of missionaries, Randolph is an American expat from Texas, who teaches aesthetic philosophy in the U. of Vienna system. He has also written, directed and produced several film shorts in Europe.
Warner Bros. exec Tom Lassally is shepherding the project.
While Saturn has a first-look deal with Touchstone Pictures, the company has set up its last two projects outside the Disney fold. In addition to the "David Gale" project, last October Cage and Levine set up the adventure film "Tom Slick: Monster Hunter" at 20th Century Fox.
Saturn is producing "Heartbreaker Inc." at Touchstone, with Cage attached to star. The actor also is attached to star in Fox's "Ironman," to be produced by Levine, John Langley and Stephen Chao.
Randolph and Saturn Films were repped on the deal by CAA's Rob Paris. Randolph is managed by Stephanie Davis of Addis-Wechsler.
-- Chris Petrikin and Paul Karon
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