EXCLUSIVE: Nicolas Cage Will Look for a 'Medallion' Taxi Cab

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Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage will star in Medallion, an action thriller directed by Simon West.

Nu Image/Millennium Films has come aboard the project as financier and is already out to buyers with the package.

The project had been in the works for a while and was to originally to have starred Clive Owen. Jason Statham was also associated with the project at one point as well.

The story, with shades of Taken, follows a father, a former master thief, who has only a few hours to find his daughter when she is kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a New York medallion taxi cab.

David Guggenheim, the former Us Weekly journalist who segued into screenwriting when he sold his high-profile spec Safe House (soon to be a Denzel Washington thriller from Universal), wrote the script.

Matthew Joynes and Jesse Kennedy of Aurelius are producing as is McG via Wonderland Sound and Vision. James Holt (Men Who Stare at Goats) is also producing.

Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short and Cassian Elwes are exec producing. Wonderland's Mary Viola is also exec producing.

Cage is a Millennium regular, having worked with the company on films such as The Wicker Man and the upcoming Summit release Drive Angry.  

The CAA-repped actor next stars in Relativity’s Season of the Witch, which opens January 7, 2011.