Three funny people with a connection to Saturday Night Live cannot save Madden, the latest football biopic that debuted on Prime Video on November 8.
The streaming film looks at how former NFL head coach and Super Bowl champion John Madden became a famous and wealthy man as the face of a new football video game and a broadcaster with a booming voice and a lively style. It also outlines his years as coach of the Oakland Raiders under team owner and iconoclast Al Davis.
Madden is played by Nicolas Cage, in what may be one of the worst casting decisions in the history of film or television. Cage is a fine action and comedy actor with many excellent credits, but in Madden you will never stop asking yourself “Why did they think Cage was right for this role?”
Christian Bale is in this movie too (as Davis), which means we really get to see committed, bizarre, hyper-intense acting that feels out of place in what should be a fun biopic.
Fired former SNL cast member (briefly) Shane Gillis appears in a minor role. Also making an appearance is former SNL writer and multiple-SNL host John Mulaney.
Cage hosted SNL in Season 18 with musical guest Bobby Brown, on September 26, 1992. He’s carved a unique place in cinema history as a box office, blockbuster, leading man, despite his rather ordinary “eccentric uncle” look. But in Madden, Cage can’t draw up the X’s and O’s to get this misplayed project into the end zone.
Former cast member Will Ferrell was originally cast as John Madden. But Ferrell never came to terms to play the former head coach and announcer. The production has been in the news for the wrong reasons: director David O. Russell reportedly offended some of his cast and crew by using “the n-word” on set. Some reports claim Russell wanted the word to be used in the football movie, and that decision did not sit well with a cast that was mostly not alive in the 1970s when colorful language was often used in sports. The editing of the film dragged on in early 2026, pushing the release date back to November, missing an intended target date that would have aligned with the start of the NFL season in September.
No Hail Mary can save this film, which suffers from a fractured script, terrible casting, and over-the-top performances that seem like bizarre 10-to-1 sketches from SNL.
