Storms along path of ‘Weather Man’

The irony of the situation is not lost on director Gore Verbinski.

While chatting on the phone from the Bahamas about his newest film, “The Weather Man,” where he is shooting the back-to-back sequels to “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” he calmly announces that the production is about to evacuate due to Hurricane Wilma warnings.

“I need an emotional weatherman,” the soft-spoken Verbinski says with a sigh. “We are going back to Los Angeles for a week. It is going to rain so hard there is no point in filming. We have to protect our assets, which are not only our cast and crew, but the rather large pirates ships we built.”

Though the “Pirates” films are big-budgeted extravaganzas, “The Weather Man” is much more intimate in scale and scope. And geared for adult audiences.

“It was hard to get made,” Verbinski admits. “In a way, I think all my other films are a means to this end. It was at Sony and they didn’t want to make it. We ended up at Paramount. These films aren’t easily made because there isn’t a category for them.”

Nicolas Cage plays the title role, a Chicago TV weather man named David Spritz, who excels at doing the weather but is a failure in his personal life. He’s divorced and the father of two troubled teenagers -- a son (Nicholas Hoult) with a drug problem who has turned to his counselor (Gil Bellows) to be a surrogate father, and an overweight daughter (Gemmenne de la Pena). David’s dying father, Robert (Michael Caine), an acclaimed writer, is trying to help his hapless son sort out his life.

“There have been other films that were greater risks fiscally for me, but none have been a greater risk emotionally,” Verbinski says. “My own father was a nuclear physicist, and when I read the script, it came at a time in my life for my storytelling to be different. I am not interested in perfecting a body of work or a particular style.”

Verbinski describes “The Weather Man” as “fragile. It has an emotional construct that doesn’t have three acts. There isn’t a car chase in the middle or a bank heist. So you are really stringing along these emotional shifts and currents. It is all about tone when you get down to it.”