Nicolas Cage might be starring in a new biopic about football commentator John Madden but the project as a David O. Russell problem.

The fact that this biopic is about Madden and stars Cage should mean there’s an immediate interest. Who would not want to see this film?!? But once you dive deeper, you realize that the filmmaker will lessen the box office draw. His involvement will almost certainly mean a lesser critical acclaim. Even though Cage as Madden has Oscar written all over it, again, it’s being directed by a problematic filmmaker.

A few years ago, the filmmaker was hit with allegations by his transgender niece. While the police dropped all of the charges because they didn’t witness it, I find it very hard to ignore the allegations. His niece filed a police report about his groping her back in 2011 and it later went public in 2012. The Sony emails that went public during the 2014 hack blasted Russell’s behavior in a conversation between Amy Pascal (former co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment) and Michael De Luca (former co-president of production for Columbia Pictures). Here’s an excerpt:

“David’s a loon, talented but geez once I saw him bring Sally Field to a party and reduce her to tears,” said De Luca. “Plus remember when he got in trouble for feeling up his transgender nieces [sic] boobs?”

If this is not enough, the filmmaker has a history that manages to be ignored by many. You don’t have to look far in order to find his history of groping and on-set abuse. People going public about his on-set abuse include George Clooney (Three Kings) and Amy Adams (American Hustle). A video went viral showing Russell getting into it with Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees. An Amazon project got cancelled in 2017 not because of Russell but because The Weinstein Company was involved with the production.

One email that became public as a result of the Sony hack revealed that the Oscar-nominated filmmaker “grabbed one guy by the collar, cursed out people repeatedly in front of others and so abused Amy Adams that Christian Bale got in his face and told him to stop acting like an asshole.” It’s not too late to talk with the likes of Clooney!

Despite David O. Russell’s own very public history, I’ll be shocked if the film doesn’t pick up multiple nominations. Even with Hollywood knowing his issues, Cage joining the film is a complete shock. Hell, Amsterdam even had its own issues. Margot Robbie revealed that they called in the Pasadena police department because the filmmaker would not stop rolling.

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