Director David O. Russell’s sports drama “Madden,” starring Nicolas Cage as legendary American football coach and sports commentator John Madden, is heading to streaming in the fall.
Amazon MGM, which is backing the movie, has scheduled “Madden” to land on Prime Video on Nov. 18. It’s expected to receive a qualifying theatrical release earlier in November but won’t play on the big screen nationwide.
Madden was the burly, garrulous head coach of the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s, leading the team to many championship games and its first Super Bowl victory. He became a mainstay of television football coverage, spending three decades as a color commentator after retiring from coaching in 1979. Russell’s movie captures Madden’s career, friendship with Al Davis (Christian Bale) and his partnership with his wife Virginia (Kathryn Hahn). John Mulaney, Sienna Miller and Shane Gillis round out the cast.
When “Madden” was announced in 2024, Russell teased that the “feature will be about the joy, humanity and genius that was John Madden in a wildly inventive, cool world of the 1970s.”
It’s unclear why Amazon MGM isn’t granting a wide release for “Madden” considering that Russell is the Academy Award-nominated filmmaker of “American Hustle,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Fighter.” However, Russell has long been a controversial figure in Hollywood with a documented history of combative and abusive behavior on his film sets. It doesn’t help that his last film, 2022’s starry period drama “Amsterdam,” collapsed in theaters with $31 million globally against an $80 million budget, losing many millions for Disney’s 20th Century Studios.
