American actor Bradley Cooper is currently awaiting Sunday’s night’s Best Supporting Actor announcement to see if he’ll be rewarded for his work in David O. Russell’s American Hustle, and he’ll soon be going off to film Clint Eastwood’s true crime drama American Sniper. So it makes perfect sense that the Older Than America actor, who was also in Wet Hot American Summer, is attached to produce and star in American Blood, the adaptation of the upcoming novel from New Zealand author Ben Sanders. I have to assume this is his long con in campaigning for the role of Amerigo Vespucci in an upcoming biopic.
Warner Bros. beat out a handful of other studios to acquire the rights to the book, according to THR, including several TV companies. At 24-years old, Sanders already has three bestselling novels under his belt, all clever crime thrillers with detective Sean Devereaux as the protagonist. American Blood will be his first novel not featuring the character and published here in the States, and it’s likely that it will turn into a series as well.
That might be good or bad news for Cooper, depending on how he enjoys playing Marshall Grade, an NYPD officer turned mob informant. Living in New Mexico as part of the witness protection program, he gets involved with a high-risk investigation concerning a missing woman. There’s a lot of room for excitement in that plotline, and it’s got the backing power not only from Warners and Cooper’s 22 & Indiana, but also Brendan Deneen of Macmillan Entertainment and Pouya Shabazian of New Leaf Literary &Media. When book-related producers are getting behind the work, that probably means something.
The script is halfway finished, and is being written by Andrew Sodroski, whose first screenplay Holland, Michigan made the 2013 Black List and was recently announced as the next film from esteemed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line), with Bryan Cranston and Naomi Watts attached to star. That’s pretty great for a first credit, and this is a great sophomore effort. It’ll be interesting to see what director takes this one on.
Cooper has been dropping out of as many movies as he’s been joining in the last year, but we can definitely expect to see him teaming up once again with Jennifer Lawrence later this year in Susanne Bier’s period drama Serena, and with Emma Stone in Cameron Crowe’s next oddball romantic comedy. But it’s not what he can be seen in, but what he’ll be heard in that has many movie lovers going crazy. He’ll soon be voicing Rocket Raccoon in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which will be hitting theaters this summer. If you missed hearing him for the first time, just give a listen to the video below.
