New Paramount+Series ‘Highfire’ Casts Nicolas Cage As Vodka Swilling Dragon

Nicolas Cage has had a hell of a career. He’s been an ex-con in love, an arm’s dealer, an alcoholic on a terminal bender, and even himself in a new movie. Now it looks like Cage is finally ready to jump to a different species all together when he takes on the role of a vodka-drinking, Flashdance-loving dragon in the Paramount+ series adaptation of the novel Highfire by Eoin Colfer.

The project is being described as being about “a vodka-drinking, Flashdance-loving dragon who lives an isolated existence in the bayous of Louisiana.” It’s a genre-bending, gritty crime-thriller with doses of magical realism.

Here’s the extended synopsis of the book from Amazon:

In the days of yore, he flew the skies and scorched angry mobs – now he hides from swamp tour boats and rises only with the greatest reluctance from his La-Z-Boy recliner. Lying low in the bayou, this once-magnificent fire breather has been reduced to lighting Marlboros with nose sparks, swilling Absolut in a Flashdance T-shirt, and binging Netflix in a fishing shack. For centuries, he struck fear in hearts far and wide as Wyvern, Lord Highfire of the Highfire Eyrie – now he goes by Vern. However…he has survived, unlike the rest. He is the last of his kind, the last dragon. Still, no amount of vodka can drown the loneliness in his molten core. Vern’s glory days are long gone. Or are they?

A canny Cajun swamp rat, young Everett “Squib” Moreau does what he can to survive, trying not to break the heart of his saintly single mother. He’s finally decided to work for a shady smuggler – but on his first night, he witnesses his boss murdered by a crooked constable. 

Regence Hooke is not just a dirty cop, he’s a despicable human being – who happens to want Squib’s momma in the worst way. When Hooke goes after his hidden witness with a grenade launcher, Squib finds himself airlifted from certain death by…a dragon?

The swamp can make strange bedfellows, and rather than be fried alive so the dragon can keep his secret, Squib strikes a deal with the scaly apex predator. He can act as his go-between (a.k.a. familiar) – fetch his vodka, keep him company, etc. – in exchange for protection from Hooke. Soon the three of them are careening headlong toward a combustible confrontation. There’s about to be a fiery reckoning, in which either dragons finally go extinct – or Vern’s glory days are back.

A triumphant return to the genre-bending fantasy that Eoin Colfer is so well known for, Highfire is an effortlessly clever and relentlessly funny tour de force of comedy and action.