It seems like a week can’t go by without a new Nicolas Cage movie, or an announcement regarding same. Today, Variety reports that Cage is reuniting with Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) director Dominic Sena for Season of the Witch, a “supernatural thriller” that concerns “the journey of 14th century knights transporting a girl suspected of being the witch responsible for spreading the Black Plague.” The Hollywood Reporter adds the detail that these knights “bring the girl to an abbey of monks trained in exorcising demons.” Ordinarily, given the biases of modern filmmakers, I would expect the film to dwell on the ignorance and superstition of the knights and monks who think the plague is spread by spirits and not by, like, vermin and bacteria. But if this is truly a “supernatural thriller”, who knows? Maybe the film will try to have it both ways, by tying the plague to evil spirits but also revealing the witch to be a force for good who cures somebody, or something. Of course, if they really wanted this film to be a Gone in Sixty Seconds reunion, they’d hire Angelina Jolie to play the witch. And the fun thing about Jolie is that if they did hire her for that part, we’d still have no idea, short of them spelling it out for us, whether she was playing a good witch or a bad witch.
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