Tejal Somvanshi
Nicolas Cage told an audience at Los Angeles Comic Con on Halloween that he finds himself a little bit homeless, a consequence of a large sinkhole that opened beneath his Malibu coastal mansion in early September and has prevented him from returning to the property since.
The collapse occurred on approximately 8 September 2026 at the beachside home, which is valued at around $10.5 million. The sinkhole measured approximately 60 feet wide and 25 feet deep and caused visible damage to the property’s driveway and deck. Following the ground collapse, authorities evacuated 31 homes in the surrounding neighbourhood as a precautionary measure while the extent of the ground instability was assessed.
The cause has been attributed to Hurricane Marie, which brought unusually strong rainfall to the Malibu area and is understood to have saturated and destabilised the coastal ground beneath the property. Reporting attributed Hurricane Marie as the precipitating event, distinguishing the damage from the kind of incremental erosion that coastal properties face in ordinary seasons.
Cage addressed the situation at a question-and-answer panel at the Los Angeles convention on 31 October 2026. He spoke of being displaced without particular alarm, confirming the practical reality without specifying where he had been staying during the weeks since the collapse. His framing drew considerable attention as a notably understated way to describe losing access to a multimillion-dollar property for an extended period.
The Malibu coastline has faced repeated incidents of ground movement and erosion associated with powerful storm systems. Properties in the area are built on terrain that is valuable precisely because of its coastal position but is also susceptible to the effects of concentrated rainfall and ongoing coastal erosion. Hurricane Marie’s unusual intensity added acute pressure on top of those existing structural vulnerabilities.
For the 31 households evacuated from nearby homes, the disruption involved the same uncertainty that any sinkhole event creates in a settled neighbourhood. When ground collapses in a populated coastal area, adjacent properties may also be at risk, and residents typically cannot return until assessments confirm it is safe to do so. That process can extend for weeks or longer depending on site conditions.
Cage’s candid description of his situation at the convention offered a public confirmation that the Malibu property remained out of use nearly two months after the collapse, and that no immediate resolution was in sight.
