Oscar winner Nicolas Cage is in talks to headline the upcoming fifth season of HBO‘s Emmy-winning crime anthology series True Detective, which marks the return of Season 4’s Issa Lopez as writer/showrunner, sources tell Deadline.
As Deadline revealed earlier this year, the new installment will be set in New York, in Jamaica Bay, per HBO’s Head of Drama Series and Film Francesca Orsi.
Cage is in talks for the lead role of Henry Logan, a New York detective on the case at the center of the new season, sources said. A rep for HBO declined comment.
The actor has been circling the part for awhile, it is yet unclear whether the deal will close. Another Oscar winner, Jodie Foster, also took a long time to make her deal for True Detective Season 4, Night Country.
“Issa has a lot to say, not unlike she did with Night Country,” Orsi said about the new installment. “It’s a different milieu but just as powerful.”
Filming on Season 5 is slated to begin in 2026 for a 2027 premiere on HBO.
Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson headlined the original installment of True Detective, with Colin Farrell and Mahershala Ali as leads of Season 2 and 3, respectively.
True Detective: Night Country, the fourth installment in the anthology, starred Foster and Kali Reis as detectives who dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice in order to solve the disappearance of the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station in Ennis, Alaska. Foster won an Emmy for her work on the show.
Lopez told the New York Post in December that “there’s going to be some important connections between everything that happens in Ennis, Alaska, and the characters in Ennis, Alaska, and what happens in the new [season]. That said, it’s a new story, new characters, everything.”
Until recently, Cage had been focused entirely on features in his acting career. True Detective would come on the heels of him headlining his first series, Prime Video’s upcoming Spider-Noir.