With all the brilliant casting news we’ve been hearing for Alex Proyas’ upcoming adaptation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, it’s fair to say that a lot of people have been getting excited for it already. Bradley Cooper was set to take on one of English literature’s most notorious figures in the form of Lucifer, with Casey Affleck, Djimon Hounsou, Dominic Purcell, Diego Boneta, Camilla Belle, and Benjamin Walker heading up the supporting cast.

The film was originally to go into production next month, but it seems that that’s no longer going to be happening, with Deadline now reporting that Legendary Pictures are postponing the start date in order to cut back on the budget.

Initially set at $120m., the projected costs are thought to have been increasing by 10-15%, which is of course a significant amount of money, and a substantial rise from the original budget, so it’s understandable that the studio would want to put a hold on things and rework the costs.

Disney’s The Lone Ranger saw a similar thing happening over the summer (you can see our coverage of those events here), and whilst it was initially feared that the project might be scrapped entirely, the budget was able to be brought down to an acceptable figure for Disney, and the same thing is expected to happen here with Paradise Lost.

We got a first look at some concept art for the film way back in July, and it was easy to see then that they were going for a pretty damn visually impressive look for the film with its motion capture technology, consisting of a lot of green-screening and visual effects. Naturally, that doesn’t come cheap, and so the producers will be looking at ways to cut down on those costs to bring the budget back down.

Like The Lone Ranger, the project isn’t planned to be scrapped entirely, and production will hopefully get underway by late spring or early summer next year instead. Whether the current principals will be able to fit it into their schedules with the revised dates is of course a different question, but I’m really hoping that they will, because the current cast is looking so good under the direction of Proyas, whose credits include Dark City and I, Robot.

Cooper, at least, has a number of films in post-production and is currently filming David O. Russell’s next film, The Silver Linings Playbook. Beyond that, nothing is set in stone, so hopefully he’ll be able to keep his schedule clear for the middle of next year to stay on as Lucifer, because that’s a role that I was so looking forward to seeing him take on. More news as we get it.