Nic Cage Relived One of His Greatest Memes on the Set of His New Jesus Horror Movie

In case you haven’t heard, Nicolas Cage’s new movie, The Carpenter’s Son, is a horror riff on the childhood of Jesus Christ. No, Cage is not playing Jesus. He’s the Carpenter, Noah Jupe plays the Boy, and FKA Twigs is the Mother. Based on the official synopsis, the film, written and directed by Lotfy Nathan, sounds a bit like Brightburn, only instead of Superman breaking bad, it may or may not be the Son of God. I’m in.

“The Carpenter’s Son tells the dark story of a family hiding out in Roman Egypt. The son, known only as ‘the Boy’, is driven to doubt by another mysterious child and rebels against his guardian, the Carpenter, revealing inherent powers and a fate beyond his comprehension. As he exercises his own power, the Boy and his family become the target of horrors, natural and divine.”

Magnolia Pictures just released the first teaser trailer for the movie, which gives absolutely nothing away other than a stiff dose of creep and the release date (a cleverly non-specific “Fall 2025 A.D.”).

In trying to find more information about this movie, however, I came across a random story from the filming that piqued my interest: “Nicolas Cage was attacked by a swarm of wild bees in a cave.” Wait, why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, he got goddamn Wicker Man-ed! Basically, news outlets in Greece reported last year that the crew had planned to film in the caves of Megara until Cage had a very literal “NOT THE BEES!” moment and they had to relocate.

But was this just Nature’s callback to one of Cage’s greatest memes, or was there some more mysterious power at play? All I can think about is Jim Caviezel getting struck by lightning while filming The Passion of the Christ and by that metric, Cage got off lucky. Heck, I’d even go so far as to say God’s a bit of a fanboy.