Troy Dodd

Nicolas Cage told the director of the new Madden movie that John Madden's voice "may not be anatomically possible" for him to do. They went ahead and made the whole movie anyway. The real John Madden once nearly let his own video game die over four missing players. Back in 1984, EA founder Trip Hawkins wanted Madden's name on a football game. He had to pitch him on an Amtrak train because Madden was scared of flying. The plan was seven players a side, since home computers back then couldn't handle 22 guys on the screen at once. Madden said no. If there weren't 11 players, it wasn't real football, and he wasn't putting his name on it. So EA kept grinding on it for three years, about triple what a game usually took back then. People inside the company started calling it Trip's Folly, and Madden figured it had been quietly canceled. It finally came out in 1988 with all 11 guys on each side. That game turned into a franchise that's sold more than 130 million copies, and a whole generation of kids who never saw him coach grew up hearing his voice every time they hit start. That's why you can't fake that voice. Between 30 years of calling games on Sundays and the video game, millions of people have it memorized. Cage says he and David O. Russell worked on it in rehearsal, and he ended up blending Madden's sound with his own take on it. He called it a cocktail. Frank Caliendo, who's been doing Madden for decades, says he offered to help and never heard back. This is a guy who was ready to let his game die rather than ship it with seven players a side. I really want to know what he'd say about the voice.