Nicolas Cage to Battle Cannibals After Nuclear Apocalypse in ‘Parish’

Nicolas Cage will play a hardened nuclear apocalypse survivor in Adam Sigal’s action-thriller Parish.

Nicolas Cage Battles Cannibals After a Nuclear Apocalypse in Action-Thriller ‘Parish’

Nicolas Cage is heading into the wasteland for Parish, a new post-apocalyptic action-thriller that will be introduced to international buyers ahead of the upcoming TIFF market.

Concourse Media is launching worldwide pre-sales on the project, which comes from writer-director Adam Sigal. Production is currently being lined up to begin in October in Minnesota.

Set 30 years after a nuclear apocalypse, Parish stars Cage as one of the last known survivors of the catastrophe. He has spent decades living inside a fortified compound alongside his highly trained attack dogs, maintaining his isolation through one rule: no one gets through the gate.

That system is challenged when a woman carrying an infant arrives outside his sanctuary seeking help. His response places the compound — and the life he has spent years constructing — at risk as a group of cannibals moves through the surrounding wasteland.

With his refuge under threat, Parish is forced to defend the compound while confronting elements of his past that have followed him into the post-apocalyptic world.

Sigal previously wrote and directed the Simon Pegg-led comedy-thriller Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose. He was also a producer on the 2024 science-fiction thriller Slingshot, starring Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne.

Joel Shapiro of MagiCity Studios, whose credits include Gunner and Killerman, is producing Parish alongside Steven Tyler Sahlein. Concourse Media CEO Matthew Shreder will executive produce and finance the project alongside sister company Archetype Media Finance.

The film will also reunite Cage with cinematographer David Tattersall, who previously worked with the actor on Con Air and Next. Tattersall’s credits also include George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy, The Green Mile and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

“There’s a scale and pedigree to Parish that immediately separates it from the pack, with all the ingredients of a real theatrical event,” Shreder said in announcing the project.

Shapiro said the production was drawn to the human story beneath the film’s survival-thriller premise, with Cage’s character placed between the isolation that has kept him alive and the consequences of allowing another person into the world he has built.

“Adam has created a world that is savage, cinematic and incredibly visceral, but what drew us to Parish was the humanity underneath it,” Shapiro said. “Nick Cage brings an unpredictability and emotional intensity that makes him perfect for this character.”

Parish continues Cage’s extensive run through genre filmmaking while placing the actor at the center of a survival story combining post-apocalyptic action, siege-thriller elements and a cannibal threat.

Concourse Media will launch world pre-sales for Parish ahead of the TIFF market, with filming currently scheduled to begin this October in Minnesota.