Bradley Cooper is formally set to position himself as the current generation’s answer to Steve McQueen, apparently, with Variety reporting that the Star Is Born star has signed on to play the lead in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming remake of ’60s cop classic Bullitt. This’ll be the first actor-director collaboration between Cooper and Spielberg, although the Fabelmans director is also serving as a producer on Cooper’s latest directorial effort, next year’s Maestro, which is set for a Netflix release.
That film, like this one, is being written in part by Josh Singer, who previously co-wrote Spielberg’s The Post. (And also a bunch of episodes of Lie To Me, Fringe, and West Wing, which is exciting if you’re the exact same kind of streaming TV rerun nerd as we are.) Singer’s script is apparently intended to be a wholly different plot than the one that sent Det. Frank Bullitt driving all over San Francisco in his iconic Ford Mustang back in 1968; that story was based off a novel, Mute Witness, by Robert L. Fish, so it’s not clear what, if anything, Singer and Spielberg will be taking as their inspiration this time.
Of course, Bullitt’s reputation isn’t built on elaborate plotting so much as it is one of the great car chases in all of cinema, all of it anchored by McQueen’s unflappable cool in the face of what must have been some truly tremendous jolts to the ass. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: We would really like to see Spielberg apply his considerable skills as a technician to that sort of extended practical sequence, and Cooper definitely has the chops at this point to serve as his cold-eyed crash test dummy. No word, as of yet, though, as to when Bullitt might find itself crashing into theaters.