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Nicolas Cage has admitted that he is “terrified” by the prospect of artificial intelligence.
The 60-year-old, who is currently promoting his new serial killer movie, Longlegs, made the admission in a new interview with author Susan Orlean in the New Yorker.
He told The Orchid Thief writer that he was due to undergo a “scan” for his forthcoming Prime Video series, Spider-Man Noir, in which the actor reprises his role as the animated webslinger in live-action.
“I have to slip out after this to go get a scan done for the show, and then also for the movie I’m doing after the show. Two scans in one day!” he began.
“They have to put me in a computer and match my eye colour and change – I don’t know,” Cage said. “They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital AI. God, I hope not AI. I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it.”
The Ghost Rider star expressed a sense of unease and consternation at the use of his likeness after his death.
“It is [really scary]. And it makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up?” he continued.
“Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!”
Cage had previously called AI “inhumane”, expressing fear and concern about the posthumous use of an artist’s likeness in ways that they may not approve. He told the Associated Press at the time that the digital resurrection of James Dean for a Vietnam movie was just such an example.
“You know, they have someone [who] owns the rights to James Dean right now, and they could put him in a Vietnam movie, which is what they’re trying to do. And I’m sure he, from the beyond, would not be happy about it.”
The actor will next be seen in forthcoming horror film Longlegs.
Directed by Oz Perkins (Gretel & Hansel, I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House), the film follows FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) as she investigates a series of murders attributed to a Satanic killer known as Longlegs (Cage) in the 1990s.
Longlegs is slated for release in the UK on Friday (12 July) – the same day as the movie’s wider US release. However, early screenings of the film have already triggered a slew of praise for Perkins’ fourth feature.
Writing on X/Twitter, Matt Neglia, editor of Next Best Picture called Longlegs “one of the best serial killer films in recent memory”, adding that the movie was “psychologically scarring” as well as “sinister” and an “unnerving descent into hell that will haunt your mind and soul”.
