In what could be the most brilliant idea for a remake or the most insane (or both?), director Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage are teaming up for an unlikely redo of Abel Ferrara's provocative 1992 cop drama Bad Lieutenant. The project was officially announced at Cannes this week and will begin shooting in late summer. Cage will take on the Harvey Keitel role as a hard-living New York City detective who's into such hopeless dead-ends as heroin use, binge-drinking, and gambling on the Darryl Strawberry's Mets. In the original film, Keitel is also a lapsed Catholic who experiences a reawakening of sorts when a gang-raped nun actually forgives her attackers—an act of grace that he sends him into such a downward spiral that he experiences a religious vision in which he calls Jesus Christ a "cocksucker." The original film was rated NC-17 (and later slashed to a dreadful R-rated version for video that also cut out Schooly D.'s "Signifying Rapper"), and was thematically particular to Ferrara's own Catholic roots. How far Herzog and Cage stray from the original remains to be seen, but on the off chance they try shot-for-shot, audiences should prepare to see something from Cage that they've never seen before. And can't unsee…