Nicolas Cage will have to re-enact some of his most famous scenes for new 'meta' movie

Nicolas Cage's wide and varied career on screen is a thing of wonder, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.

And it sounds like he'll have to confront all of it in his new movie, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent.

In it, he will play not just himself, but two fictionalised versions of himself, in the most mind-bending premise since Being John Malkovich.

Read more: Cage to play Cage in new movie

As such, he will have to re-enact some of his most iconic roles in the movie.

“It’s a stylised version of me, and the fact I even have to refer to myself in the third person makes me extremely uncomfortable,” he told Empire. “There are many scenes in the movie where modern or contemporary – here we go – ‘Nic Cage’ and then young ‘Nic Cage’ are colliding and arguing and battling it out. It’s an acrobatic approach to acting.

“I don’t like to look back. But this movie kind of pushes it all back in my face. I’m probably going to have to look at a couple of the movies from the past again, because I think we’re gonna have to reenact some of those sequences. It’s like walking through a Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari version of Con Air and Face/Off.”

He goes on: “Remember that talk show I went on, Wogan, when I was promoting Wild At Heart? Young Nic Cage [in the film] will be that guy. But this is a very stylised version of me. It’s definitely just me ‘taking the p**s’, as they say, out of myself.”

Just to refresh anyone's memory...

The movie is being made by writer and director Tom Gormican, known for the US TV comedy series Ghosted, starring Craig Robinson and Adam Scott.

It will follow two Cages; one being an older version of Cage who is struggling with a fading career, and another a young doppelgänger of himself from his career heyday, who taunts him mercilessly.

Read more: A Face/Off reboot is in the works

The elder, cash-strapped Cage takes a $1 million job attending a party for a Mexican billionaire superfan, who turns out to be a cartel kingpin.

Cage is then recruited by the CIA to help bring him down, while also having to save his own family.

It's not the first time that Cage has played two versions of himself.

He played twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman in 2002's surreal meta-drama Adaptation, penned by the real Charlie Kaufman, and directed by Spike Jonze.