The Hangover star is a big fan of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels, about a space war, which are set to be made into a movie after producer Graham King acquired the rights for Warner Bros.
Cooper teamed up with a friend to write a screenplay for the film and they pitched their script to King, and the actor is convinced their ideas would make “an epic movie” – which he would love to direct.
He tells U.S. interviewer Charlie Rose, “There’s this series of science-fiction novels called Hyperion by Dan Simmons… My friend and I went to Graham King, who owns the rights to Hyperion, and we wrote a treatment on spec saying, ‘Look we know this is very audacious, but could you just read this spec we wrote? We think we have a way in to tell this story’.
“So now we’re negotiating and… who knows what’s going to happen? Ideally I’d love to direct it (but) there’s no way! I shouldn’t say that, you never know. This is a huge movie, this would be an epic movie. But at least we’ve taken the reins and said, we’re going to go after it and now we’re gonna write the script. At least we have a shot to write the script for Hyperion.”
Cooper also reveals he plans to eventually step behind the camera and focus on directing: “Ultimately I would love to direct – that’s ultimately what I wanna do.”
