Christian Bale or Daniel Day Lewis were considered for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten considered Christian Bale or Daniel Day Lewis for 'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent'.

Although the filmmakers managed to convince Nicolas Cage to play himself in the action-comedy, they believe there are only two other actors who could have taken on the role if he refused.

Kevin told The Hollywood Reporter: "There were times when I think I, more than Tom, was trying to talk myself into other ideas. The only actually good idea - I don’t know whose it was - was to have either Christian Bale or Daniel Day-Lewis playing Nic Cage. But really, no. Nobody else who really has a mixture of the super high talent he has and the goodwill of people wanting him to succeed."

However, convincing Cage to sign on to play a heightened version of himself was not easy.

Kevin explained: "We were told that Nic has done these projects before and he’s not wild about Nic as Nic. And we weren’t two guys who had a huge body of work that you could point to and be like, 'No, trust us'.

"We knew that we needed to have a real offer to go along with the script. So eventually we got studio interest and once a couple of studios came on board, that’s when it started to become real."

While the movie is receiving rave reviews, there is one deleted scene that the filmmakers wish they had included.

Kevin said: "The one for me that I miss is there’s a scene when we first meet Javi [Pedro Pascal] and he’s showing Nick around his place. Nick asks what the Wi-Fi password is. Javi kind of stops and there’s clearly something bothering him, and then he starts “N-A-T-I-O-N” and you see it’s 'National Treasure 2'. And he’s so mortified. And he goes, 'National Treasure Two colon Book of Secrets.'"