Nicolas Cage Is Back In The Arms Business: First ‘Lords Of War’ Teaser Puts Yuri Orlov Against His Own Son

LOS ANGELES — Nicolas Cage is back in the arms business. Vertical released the first teaser trailer on Wednesday for Lords of War, the sequel to the 2005 crime thriller Lord of War, with Cage returning as international arms dealer Yuri Orlov — and facing, this time, a rival who shares his name. The film is set to open in US theaters on January 22, 2027.

The sequel’s engine is family. Orlov discovers he has a son, Anton, played by Bill Skarsgård — a mercenary building a private army off America’s conflicts in the Middle East who is trying to top his father’s wrongs rather than stop them. The teaser sets the two on a collision course over the family business and the Orlov legacy: the father who sold weapons to every side, against the son determined to build an empire bigger than his.

The Team Behind The Original

Andrew Niccol, who wrote and directed the 2005 film, returns in both roles, and Cage is also a producer on the sequel alongside Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi and Niccol. The cast around the two leads includes Laura Harrier, Sylvia Hoeks and Greg Tarzan Davis, with Georgina Beedle, Rafael Morais and Max Kraus also appearing. It is the first time Cage and Skarsgård have shared a screen.

Twenty-One Years On

The original Lord of War, released in 2005, followed Orlov’s rise through the international weapons trade — a character drawn loosely on the exploits of real-life arms dealer Viktor Bout — and grew from a modest theatrical performer into a cult staple, one of the defining roles of Cage’s career. The sequel was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 with Skarsgård attached from the start. Cameras rolled in November 2025 in Belgium, with filming continuing in Casablanca and Marrakesh in Morocco and in Budapest, under cinematographer Amir Mokri. Vertical acquired the US distribution rights in March 2026 and screened the first footage for exhibitors at CinemaCon before Wednesday’s public teaser.

Why This Pairing

The original film surrounded Cage with Jared Leto as Orlov’s brother Vitaly and Ethan Hawke as the Interpol agent hunting him, and its reputation has only grown since 2005 — its opening sequence, following a single bullet from factory to battlefield, is still taught and quoted two decades later, and arms-control campaigners adopted the film as an exhibit in the real trade it dramatised. The sequel arrives in the middle of a long Cage resurgence: the critical rehabilitation that ran from Pig in 2021 through The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Dream Scenario to the box-office success of Longlegs in 2024. Skarsgård, meanwhile, has built his own run from the It films to John Wick: Chapter 4 — a screen presence built on stillness and menace, set here directly against Cage’s salesman charm. Father against son is the plot; it is also the casting.

The teaser is brief, and leans harder into action than the original’s satirical register — but the setup is unmistakably the same world: war as a business, and business as a family affair. Lords of War reaches US theaters on January 22, 2027.

Sources: Vertical teaser release and film records, November 4, 2026; The Playlist and MovieWeb, November 4, 2026; ComingSoon, November 4, 2026; The Hollywood Reporter via ANI, April 2026; Wikipedia production record for Lords of War (Cannes 2023 announcement, filming locations, March 2026 Vertical acquisition).