Who will buy Werner Herzog’s ‘Bad Lieutenant’?

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Haven’t you always wanted to see Nicolas Cage as a crack-addled homicide cop, tearing up the streets of New Orleans, squeezing a hooker’s butt, threatening witnesses, imagining he sees iguanas on his police captain’s desk and cutting off an old lady’s oxygen supply when he needs a quick piece of information?

If the new unofficial trailer that’s popped up everywhere on the Web is any indication, Werner Herzog’s new version of ‘Bad Lieutenant,’ which stars Cage, Eva Mendes, Xzibit and Val Kilmer, could be an instant camp classic. (It’s a quasi follow-up to Abel Ferrara’s notorious 1992 policier that starred Harvey Keitel as a drug-crazed cop on the loose in New York.)

Judging from the trailer (see below), Herzog didn’t pull any punches, though it’s hard to say whether the film leans more toward Herzog’s chilly, doomsday vibe or Cage’s uproariously kitschy, scenery-chewing mania. In my favorite scene, Cage is riding around with a car full of nasty bad guys, happily toking away on what he calls his lucky crack pipe. One of the thugs laughs, saying ‘You’re a crazy [cop].’ Cage’s deadpan response: ‘You don’t have a lucky crack pipe?’

The movie was financed by Avi Lerner’s Millennium Films, which has been looking for a U.S. distributor -- hence the release of the eye-popping trailer, which made the rounds recently in Cannes. So far, Avi hasn’t had any bites. Why not? One reason: The U.S. market for independently financed genre movies has badly eroded in the past 18 months, in part because studios want to make their own (Screen Gems), in part because marketing costs have spiraled out of control at a time when DVD revenues are no longer offsetting the expense of theatrical marketing campaigns.

Millennium is in the process of showing the film around town, but so far the reaction has been muted at best. The list of buyers is pretty short. The obvious candidates, in terms of studios that know what to do with genre films: Lionsgate, Summit, Rogue and (if they have the money) Dimension. If nothing else, the film seems destined for the Nic Cage Over the Top Acting Hall of Fame. See for yourself:

PREVIOUSLY: HOW AVI LERNER FINANCED ‘BAD LIEUTENANT’: