Oh, Bradley Cooper. Just because you think something is a good idea doesn’t mean it is. Take Case 39 for example. I’m sure that, at the time, doing a horror thriller opposite girlfriend Renee Zellweger seemed like a swell idea. How’d that one turn out? That’s what I thought. Even so, you’ve managed to make the upgrade from supporting player to all-out leading man thanks to The Hangover, The A-Team and Limitless, but now you want want to use that career capital to play…Lucifer?
That’s what Variety is saying. According to the trade, the star of this summer’s surefire comedy hit wants to team with director Alex Proyas (Knowing, I, Robot) for an adaptation of John Milton’s epic 17th-century poem Paradise Lost, which chronicles the epic war in heaven between archangels Michael and Lucifer and also touches upon the latter’s role in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace. Warner Bros.-based Legendary Pictures has been developing this project for a long while, waiting for the right pieces to fall into place. It seems as though Cooper’s eagerness to play the Devil is jump-starting the stalled production and the company will try to capitalize on today’s buzz to get it going.
A handful of writer’s have been involved in adapting the classic poem, from Stuart Hazeldine and Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi to Lawrence Kasdan, who provided a recent polish (as did Ryan Condal). That usually is a red flag, but thematically the story is so deep it comes as no surprise that it would take this many scribes to get to the heart of the narrative. The source notes that the film is being molded into an all-out actioner which could be shot in 3D to accommodate various aerial warfare sequences. Angels flying around the heavens doing battle? I’m in. But Cooper shouldn’t be.
I’m sure that as an actor one would want to take risks and do something out of the ordinary, but can you honestly tell me that you’d BELIEVE Bradley Cooper as the Devil? Hell, I don’t even think he’s right to play any kind of villain at this point, let alone the Prince of Darkness.
Source: Variety
