Last year, the Cloud Ten production company sought to cast Kirk Cameron out from its Left Behind series for the sin of being unmarketable, seeking a more righteously mainstream actor to lead the reboot of its saga detailing how good-but-not-that-good Christians abandoned after the Rapture will fight Satan's forces using only prayer and machine guns. Naturally, given that the plan was to remake God's angry face in a graven image "more in the mold of a classic disaster movie," and it centers on one man in charge of yelling about the apocalypse, writer-director Paul LaLonde could think of only a single actor to star: Nicolas Cage, whose weekend plans likely included running around and yelling anyway, and whose filmography already reads like a series of Job-like torments.
Cage is also uniquely qualified for Left Behind's politically sound story of the Antichrist's rise in Romania, having made his feelings about that country and his intentions to "die for honor" there well known. And he is nothing if not dogged in his quest to learn how things got burned, even if that thing is "the Earth" and the answer is "God." Also, he doesn't seem to ask many questions, which Christians like. Though this decision does make one wonder how the producers hope to afford Cage while still having enough of their $15 million budget left over for the special effects they demand, and turn their meager loaves and fishes into fire-loaves and fish-bombs, as it were. But then, such is the power of faith, and the security of knowing that your movie isn't very good anyway.