Bradley Cooper In Talks For 'Paradise Lost'

Whatever contract Bradley Cooper signed with the devil to make his career blossom into leading man status just paid off in strangely appropriate fashion. Because he's now the first contender to play Lucifer in the first person shooter — oops, sorry –  action movie version of Paradise Lost that Alex Proyas and Legendary Pictures are cooking up.

Variety says there is no formal offer out yet, but that Bradley Cooper wants the part and some talks have started. The idea of Bradley Cooper's smirking Lucifer isn't really what I imagined for this film, but given that the whole enterprise does sound more like something designed to generate a new line of action figures rather than a legit retelling of the story of Lucifer's fall, who knows what the role is actually like? (And, you know, with a great director I can almost see Bradley Cooper playing the Lucifer of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series — almost.) I do enjoy watching the actor in some roles — he's just right for The Hangover — but I'm having a hard time figuring this one out.

Nothing else new has come up about the film — the trade is still going on the recap that we've been running for a while:

Paradise Lost, long in the works at Legendary, tells the story of the epic war in heaven between archangels Michael and Lucifer, including the latter's role in Adam and Eve's fall from grace. Pic will be crafted as an action vehicle that will include aerial warfare, possibly shot in 3D.

There is already a long list of screenwriters on the film: Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi wrote an intro draft; Stuart Hazeldine developed it; Lawrence Kasdan did a polish pass; and Ryan Condal wrote the most recent draft. Movies like this can have a laundry list of screenwriters often, so this is basically par for the course. Besides, it has to take several voices to turn Milton's epic poem into something that'll look good as a two and a half minute trailer.