Even Academy Award winners are suffering from financial woes this recession. Actor Nicolas Cage lost two homes in New Orleans worth a total of $6.8 million in a foreclosure auction Thursday.

Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Bank purchased Cage's 1140 Royal Street property in the French Quarter appraised at $3.5 million for $2.3 million. The bank, which has about 1,900 branches throughout the South, Midwest and Texas, paid $2.2 million for Cage's 2523 Pataniya Street property appraised at $3.3 million in the Garden District.

New Orleans's civil Sheriff Paul Valteau said no other bids were made on the houses.

Cage owed $5.5 million in mortgage payments and $151,730 to the City of New Orleans in real estate taxes, according to Valteau.

Hancock Park Real Estate Co., a corporation through which Cage purchased both homes, is listed as the official property owner. Valteau said attorneys representing Samuel Levin, Cage's former business manager, set up the corporation so that Cage's name would not appear on the mortgage documents -- a common strategy among celebrities.

Levin also was listed on the mortgage document as the agent for service of process, Valteau added. That agent is the officer appointed by a corporation to receive legal notices.

Last month, Cage filed a lawsuit against Levin in California claiming that Levin duped the Hollywood actor out of more than $20 million since 2001 when he was hired.

The suit said Levin "lined his pockets with several million dollars in business management fees while sending Cage down a path toward financial ruin."

The suit went on to say Cage has "discovered that he is now forced to sell major assets and investments at a significant loss and is faced with huge tax liabilities because of Levin's incompetence, misrepresentations and recklessness. Rather than attaining financial security, Cage has been forced to dispose of significant assets in order to pay for Levin's gross misconduct."

A reporter's calls to Levin's office for comment were not immediately returned.

CNN reported that Cage owes more than $6 million in back taxes and his properties in California and Las Vegas have also been foreclosed on and are designated for auction later this month.

The actor, who's known for his roles in Leaving Las Vegas and National Treasure, has 5 projects slated for 2010, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Cage's publicist Annett Wolf said she had "no information and can't help" when reached for comment.

We're going to pump the brakes after that headline because there's a lot of rumor manure to sift through. Earlier today Mania reported a big rumor that Black Cat would be the new villain in Spider-Man 4, and that Rachel McAdams (of The Notebook and Wedding Crashers fame) was the frontrunner for the role. However, this seemed to be just another in a long line of ridiculous villain rumors, but then our friends at SlashFilm found a post in The Observer regarding actress/columnist Romola Garai, who revealed she had an audition for a role in Spider-Man 4. But is she auditioning for Black Cat or asupposed new female lead?

Let's answer that second question first before we dig into this villain debacle. SlashFilm's apparent certainty on Sam Raimi looking for "a new female lead" is quite misleading and because of this misrepresentation, highly inaccurate. A new female lead fully implies that the story would put Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane on the back-burner in favor of a new leading lady, but this is simply not the case. Dunst is still very much involved with the production and our sources say is being paid her full price for the project, so I doubt this new female role is that of a female lead, but rather a strong supporting role akin to Bryce Dallas Howard's work in Spider-Man 3 as Gwen Stacy. Now that we've cleared that up, onto the real story.

First let's just keep everyone on the ground and say that this should all be taken with a grain of salt. There seems to be a decent chance that Black Cat could be the villain if not at least one of the villains but at this point it's almost impossible to know. After Sam Raimi's talk about getting back to basics, it seemed like the two villain formula would be abandoned, but maybe he just wants to do it right this time. In fact, Black Cat's story (which includes a struggle with her unethical thieving ways and later a romance with Spider-Man) fits well with Raimi's Spider-Man formula, which always finds the villains troubling not only the costumed hero, but also becoming entangled in Peter Parker's personal life as well.

Black Cat's incarnation begins with her secret identity Felicia Hardy who was inspired to follow in her imprisoned father's footsteps as a cat burglar. But her new life was thrown into upheaval when she was date-raped by her boyfriend, Ryan. She turned her grief and shame into rage, channeling her feelings for revenge towards intensifying her training regime in martial arts and acrobatics. But when Ryan was killed by a drunk driver, depriving her of the satisfaction of revenge, Felicia set out stealing from others to compensate psychologically for what was stolen from her. It was her thievery and attempt to break her father out of prison that ultimately brought her into Spider-Man's life where she would find love and reform from her criminal lifestyle.

As I said, there's no way we can know this for certain just yet. There's still just as much of a chance that the other recent rumor of Dr. Kurt Connors finally stepping into the villainous role of The Lizard could happen as well. Anything could happen at this point! All I know is that what I'm hearing (but cannot divulge) are huge details along the lines of something from Mania's source that got buried in their story, and that's "[Sam Raimi and Co.] are

[also] casting for a male villain, but had few details." I'd keep my eyes peeled for that bit before obsessing about this Black Cat business.

And really, this story from Romola Garai probably has nothing to do with Black Cat, because if Rachel McAdams was really a frontrunner, that means they've got quite the list of actresses for this character and I seriously doubt they are still putting lesser known actresses "on tape" for it. Unless it is known there is a wide search for a role to be filled, roles like this usually don't have auditions especially with names like Rachel McAdams being thrown around. And narratively I just don't know if this is the right approach because not only is a lone female villain a hard sell (remember Catwoman had The Penguin with her in Batman Returns), but she just feels a little too similar to Black Widow from the upcomingIron Man 2.

We've seen Will Smith fight aggressive aliens, infectious bloodthirsty humans, and self-righteous robots, but when all is said and done, it's really awe inspiring to see him put away the guns and "Aw, hellno!" attitude when he buckles down for a serious drama. So it pleases me to see that Pajiba has a scoop about Will Smith taking on the lead role (as well as producing) a contemporary adaptation of the Daniel Keyes' short story and subsequent novel Flowers for Algernon, the story of Charlie, a mentally challenged man, who is the first human test subject for an experimental surgery that artificially increases intelligence.

After a successful experiment on the titular lab mouse Algernon, the surgery is then applied to Charlie, raising his IQ from 68 to 185. But his newfound intelligence comes at the cost of his ability to socialize normally as he becomes alienated from those who are of inferior intelligence. All the more staggering are the results of the experimental treatment as time passes and Algernon's intelligence begins to deteriorate until his untimely death. The story itself is told in the form of Charlie's progress reports that he writes as part of monitoring the experiment, and in his writing we become aware of his increased cognitive skills.

The story has been adapted several times before including as Ralph Nelson’s Charly, which won Cliff Robertson an Academy Award in 1969, and most recently a made-fo-TV movie starring Matthew Modine in 2000. While this project seems right up Smith's alley after his award-winning performances in dramas like Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds, he's a busy guy with no less than some 25 projects in development that he's attached to including several recently announced sequels currently being written. It could be years before he gets to this project, and until we get any confirmation, we have no idea when this will get off the ground. We'll keep our eyes peeled for any further developments though. Sound good?