Visit the stunning villa from ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’
Having starred in over 100 movies, the career of American actor Nicolas Cage has taken him to countless locations around the world, from the streets of urban Japan in Prisoners of the Ghostland to the isolation of Alcatraz Island in the 1996 movie The Rock. An iconic Hollywood action hero, Cage has gone through several different cinematic identities since his 1996 Oscar win, becoming something of an internet sensation.
Creating an idiosyncratic cinematic ‘insanity’ at the turn of the new millennium that included the use of cartoonish facial expressions and eclectic choices of vocabulary, the actor built an exaggerated version of his personality that has recently been celebrated in the new movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Starring Cage as a fictionalised version of himself, the new movie, directed by Tom Gormican of That Awkward Moment, puts the actor on a pedestal, exploring how he deals with his inner conflict between being a cultural cinematic icon and a good father. Largely taking place at an impressive villa complex that houses a billionaire fanboy, the location for the movie is truly gobsmacking, so where exactly in the world is it?
The filming locations of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent:
Dubrovnik, Croatia – Villa Sheherezade
A large majority of the new action, comedy movie takes place at Villa Sheherezade, a grand complex that features a stunning main house with a swimming pool, jacuzzi and stunning views over the Croatian landscape. The perfect location to host the lavish billionaire character of Javi Gutierrez in the movie, the elegance of Villa Sheherezade goes without saying, looking like the kind of luxurious pad that’s only available for the super-rich.
Surprisingly, however, Villa Sheherezade is available to rent to anyone lucky enough to have the money, with the spacious complex coming complete with a grand salon, dining room, study, professional kitchen and a 24-hour butler ready to answer your every need. As if this wasn’t enough, the villa itself is a mere walk from a private beach that is used at one point in the movie when Nicolas Cage arrives at the location by boat.
Spending much of the film at the villa, the location becomes the focal point for much of the movie’s action, and when the production has plunged so much money into securing the villa, you can appreciate why.
Konavle, Croatia
Filming in Croatia in 2020 for a total of just 15 days, 337 workers descended upon the set, including 87 crew members and 198 extras with many of these people being used for the busy scenes that took place in Konavle, Cavtat. Driving into the small municipality of Cavtat whilst in the process of tripping on acid, the two main characters briefly explore the area before escaping in a car in pure paranoid fear.
Located southeast of Dubrovnik, Konavle is a small region of Croatia, with the centre of the municipality being Cavtat. Shot across the region as well as Trsteno further up the coast and Čilipi Airport, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was shot with the help of the local production company Ambasada Studio, with the team encouraged to join the project as part of a programme operated in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Media.
Whilst such locations were a luxury to use and film in, director Tom Gormican explained the difficulties of working in such and isolated villa during the Covid-19 pandemic, detailing the “unbelievably hard” process in discussion with Daily Dead.
“Just trying to get all of those different props during peak COVID, where you couldn’t ship anything anywhere, it was just unbelievably hard to source a lot of that stuff. But we ended up getting it somehow,” Gormican outlined, with the final movie showing off their staggering hard work, shuttling camera crews to gorgeous locations across the rural Croatian coast.
