Nicolas Cage plays John Madden in David O. Russell’s Madden, which streams on Prime Video starting Wednesday, Nov. 18. Christian Bale plays Al Davis, who hired Madden to coach the Oakland Raiders when he was 32. The movie follows Madden from the Raiders to the broadcast booth and into the making of the video game. The real timeline helps explain how a coach who left the sideline in his early 40s ended up teaching football to people who had never played it.
The Raiders hired a 32-year-old coach
Madden entered the NFL as a Philadelphia Eagles draft pick in 1958. A knee injury in training camp ended his playing career. The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s account says he spent part of his recovery watching film with quarterback Norm Van Brocklin. He coached at a California community college and at San Diego State before joining the Raiders as a linebackers coach in 1967. Davis put him in charge two seasons later.
Madden won 103 regular-season games in 10 years and never had a losing season. His teams reached the playoffs in eight of those seasons. His Raiders kept reaching the playoffs, only to fall short of a championship until the 1976 season. They beat Minnesota in Super Bowl XI, the franchise’s first title. Madden’s 2006 Hall of Fame speech captures what the hire meant to him. He asked Davis to introduce him at the ceremony, nearly four decades after Davis gave him the job.
What he carried into the broadcast booth
Madden retired from coaching after the 1978 season and initially turned down CBS, according to the Hall of Fame. He changed his mind and went on to work with Pat Summerall at CBS and Fox, then with Al Michaels at ABC and NBC. Madden could stop at a replay, draw over it with a telestrator and explain what the blocking had done to create a lane. A play that looked like a jumble of bodies in real time became an assignment a viewer could follow.
That work continued long after his coaching career ended. The Hall of Fame counts 22 Thanksgiving games and 11 Super Bowls in his time as a broadcaster. His last telecast was Super Bowl XLIII in February 2009. By then, a generation of players had also learned to read formations and pick plays with his name on the box.
Why the game took years to make
Electronic Arts approached Madden about a football game in 1984, while he was calling games for CBS. In EA’s account of the collaboration, he insisted on 11 players per side. That meant the developers had to work out how to put all 22 players on the screen. The first John Madden Football, designed by Robin Antonick, arrived in 1988. EA’s retrospective on the series lists the Apple II among the computers that could run the early game.
The difference between the broadcast and the game was what the audience could do. On television, Madden showed why a play opened up. At a computer, players could choose the play and see how it turned out. Madden kept working with EA after that first release. In 2022, the year after he died, EA put him back on the cover and used archival recordings of his commentary in Madden NFL 23.
When and where to watch
Amazon lists Nov. 18 for streaming in the United States and includes the film with Prime. Kathryn Hahn plays Madden’s wife, Virginia, and John Mulaney plays EA founder Trip Hawkins. The scripted film shares a platform with It’s in the Game: Madden NFL, an earlier documentary series about the game franchise. Search for the 2026 title with Cage if both come up in the app.
