Nicolas Cage's Madden movie trailer is here: the release date lands just before Thanksgiving
The full trailer for Madden is here, and I'm going to need everyone to remain seated: Nicolas Cage is in the headset, he is yelling, and it is everything the phrase "Nicolas Cage plays John Madden" promised us it would be.
This is the David O. Russell biopic that's been lumbering toward us since 2024, when Cage took over a role once circling Will Ferrell. On the evidence of these two and a half minutes, the wait was worth it.
The cast is a fever dream and I mean that as a compliment
Look at this roster and tell me a casting director didn't have the week of their life:
- Nicolas Cage as John Madden, coach-turned-broadcaster-turned-video-game-deity
- Christian Bale as Raiders owner Al Davis, Madden's "best friend and true original"
- Kathryn Hahn as Virginia Madden
- John Mulaney as Trip Hawkins, the EA founder who begged Madden to put his name on a football game
- Sienna Miller as Carol Davis, plus Shane Gillis, because of course
The trailer runs Madden's whole arc: the Super Bowl-winning Raiders years, the broadcast booth where he became the sound of American football, and the meeting that accidentally birthed the biggest sports video game in history — including Madden bellowing at a prototype, "You only have seven men on a team and I'm out." A sports biopic where the third act is a software negotiation. I'm so serious when I say I'll be seated.
Cage has entered his discomfort era
Cage, a man not historically associated with football fandom, has been upfront about why he took this on:
"I don't think of myself when I think of John Madden. So I was like, OK, how can I get way out of my comfort zone?"
He's going for a hybrid of Madden's cadence rather than a full impersonation, which feels right — nobody alive can out-Madden Madden. Russell, for his part, says he wanted the film to capture Madden's "joy, humanity and genius" inside the "wildly inventive, cool world of the 1970s." The prosthetics-assisted transformation has already split the internet into "great or awful" camps, which, historically speaking, is exactly where a Cage performance wants to live.
About that Thanksgiving positioning
Madden was Thanksgiving football — the man gave us the turducken and the six-legged turkey awards. So it's almost offensively on-brand that this movie is built for the holiday: a limited theatrical run from November 11, then streaming worldwide on Prime Video from November 18 — moved up from its originally announced Thanksgiving Day slot, so by the time the turkey hits the table it'll be sitting right there on the home screen. Boom. Pass the gravy.
Previously we wrote: Billie Lourd's kids are getting to know Carrie Fisher through Star Wars
