May 5 2009 Nicolas Cage Film Takes Out an Institution

Disaster on the set of The Sorcerer's Apprentice! While shooting a car chase sequence in Times Square yesterday, a stuntman in a Ferrari lost control and crashed into the front of a Sbarro's, injuring two and temporarily shutting down the one place in the city to get a genuine New York slice:

A movie chase scene got too realistic early today when a car jumped a curb during a film shoot and smashed into the entrance of a Times Square restaurant, injuring two people, police and witnesses said.

The action scene gone awry unfolded at the Sbarro at 47th Street and Seventh Avenue shortly before 1 a.m.

Street closing notices posted by the police indicated the shoot was for the Nicolas Cage film, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

(via Digg)

Oh, good, Jerry Bruckheimer and National Treasure-director Jon Turteltaub managed to squeeze a high-speed Ferrari chase into The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Sounds like they might have slightly tweaked the original 1797 Goethe poem. Who would have thought?

Well, regardless, let's hope no one else gets injured during shooting. They still have to shoot the big scene where the apprentice fires a rocket launcher while hanging one-handed off the wing of a Harrier.

Crash video below the cut.

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Mar 27 2008 'National Treasure' To Fulfill Its Trilogy Destiny

Like cancer cells or the Osmond clan, National Treasure is one of those magical life-forms with the inherent ability for terribly unwanted yet inexorable reproduction. Or at least so says director Jon Turteltaub, who has laid out plans for a third chapter of the impossibly successful National Treasure franchise, claiming that the series "begets sequels because it's the kind of genre MEANT to beget sequels." I'm sure it has nothing to do with the last National Treasure begetting $442 million, or Cage's unsatiable hunger for newer, fuller, more expensive hair.

But at least we needn't worry that the next installment will be rushed out without consideration of the high National Treasure standard of quality. Turteltaub gives us a glimpse as to why we'll have to wait until 2011 for another sequel:

By the time we come up with a decent idea and develop it into a complicated and intelligent puzzle it's going to be at least 2009. Then to prep it and cast it... it should be three years away.

By my calculations, that's about five months to finalize the "Nicolas Cage goes back in time to save Lincoln, collect treasure" storyline, and another four to sort it out with intelligent details like "he uses Ben Franklin's time machine he finds under a monument or something."

National Treasure 3 in 2011 [Cinema Blend]