Dream Scenario Release Date, Cast, Plot, Trailer, And More Info

What if Nicolas Cage was Freddy Krueger, minus the fondness for murdering people, the burn-induced scarring, and the razor-bladed glove? Cage's character, the unsuspecting middle-aged professor Paul Matthews, even shares Freddy's predilection for cozy knitted sweaters in "Dream Scenario," the latest eccentric exercise in metamodern storytelling from contemporary indie powerhouse A24.

Much like Paul becomes an overnight celebrity when he inexplicably begins popping up in people's dreams around the world, "Dream Scenario" has suddenly found itself in the spotlight following its positive reception on the film festival circuit. With Cage essentially portraying two characters in the film (the real Paul and the one who keeps intruding into people's nighttime fantasies), his performances in "Dream Scenario" are already being compared to his acclaimed work playing radically different twins in director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman's surreal dramedy "Adaptation." In his own review for /Film, Matt Donato declared the film the "rare modern Cage movie that understands there's more to his talents than gifable outbursts," putting "Dream Scenario" in such esteemed company as "Mandy" and "Pig."

With the awards buzz around the film getting louder by the day, here's everything we know about "Dream Scenario" so far.

If you spend enough time online, you're bound to notice that ordinary people who abruptly become internet-famous have a tendency to fall from grace almost as swiftly. The term for such individuals, "Milkshake Duck," refers to the imaginary scenario in which a duck becomes a viral phenomenon due to its love of drinking milkshakes, only to become nefarious just as quickly when it is revealed the duck is racist. In the context of "Dream Scenario," Cage's character Paul Matthews teaches evolutionary biology at Osler University and just wants to be published when he "goes viral" after somehow showing up in the dreams of people around the world.

Strangely enough, the idea of numerous people dreaming about the same exact individual isn't as far removed from reality as you might think. In a real-world hoax dubbed "This Man," the Italian sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella perpetuated the notion that people the world over were seeing the face of a specific man in their dreams, which in turn coerced more people into reporting that they, too, had seen the same man in their own dreams. But while "Dream Scenario" puts a fantastical spin on this scenario, it's ultimately more interested in what happens when things take a turn for the darker and Paul himself is "Milkshake Ducked" as public opinion shifts against him (whether rightly so or not).

"Dream Scenario" serves as Norwegian writer/director Kristoffer Borgli's follow-up to "Sick of Myself," his critically acclaimed (and rather disturbing) satire about a woman who deliberately disfigures herself in a bid to achieve social media fame. Even on paper, one can spot some clear similarities between the two films and the way they use their twisted horror-comedy setups to examine how people interact with one another in the age of the modern internet (not to mention, the fickleness of viral success and the dangers of using it to feed one's ego). It's no wonder the studio behind films like Daniels' metamodern multiversal adventure "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and Ari Aster's nightmare comedy "Beau is Afraid" is distributing Borgli's latest. Tellingly enough, Aster himself joins Cage as one of the producers on "Dream Scenario," as does Tyler Campellone, Jacob Jaffke, and Aster's longtime producer Lars Knudsen (who's also coming off producing "The Northman").