New Concept Art And Info For Summit's Drive Angry 3D, Starring Nicolas Cage

When I first started to hear about Drive Angry 3D, which Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine 3D) is directing with Nicolas Cage, I expected something that might look rather like Faster, the Dwayne Johnson film that just got a teaser today.

But I should have known better — a bunch of set visit reports have just gone online, and Lussier, Cage and others involved in the film are making Drive Angry sound like a much more intense, violent film. And if the concept art is any reliable indication (50/50 chance of that) then it could be a positively apocalyptic experience.

So, the story basics: In a turn that sounds more than a bit like Ghost Rider, Nic Cage plays a father sent from Hell back to Earth to find the people responsible for murdering his daughter and kidnapping her baby. There's another agent from Hell called the Accountant (William Fichtner) and Piper (Amber Heard) who is along for the ride with Cage.

Cage told Latino Review that, despite recently making some family movies (like Bad Lieutenant...) he's still interested in making genre stuff. "I still have a passion for the midnight audience and for midnight movies and I felt that this was as good a chance to make a midnight movie as any, so that's why I jumped in."

Let's be more specific. What's the story behind his character? Without giving too much away, Cage says,

Well, there's the level of killing. You know, he's not really a...it's more like a force from another dimension. It's almost like karma on some level. It's not really a...it's almost more than human like a ghost on a vengent tear. Like karma. I see him as a protector of children when something horrific is about to happen to children, he is awakened from the abyss and I like characters that have supernatural aspects to them because I feel like you can do more with them.

You can tell the guys behind the film come from a horror background, as they're already making the film's level of violence into a selling point. Co-writer Todd Farmer told Bloody Disgusting,

It's as violent as you can get and still get an 'R', I think. We start and the moment the movie opens it's in your face. All the stuff that you guys are going to see, it's fun.

But what really made Nic Cage sign on for this film? It's a bit spoilerish (I believe) so read this last bit only if you're supremely curious. "..when it was handed to me in this movie that they were going to shoot my eye out with a gun I thought, "yeah I'm going to make that movie."

[concept art via HitFix]