His star has been rising and rising of late. From playing, in all honesty, a bit of a douche in Wedding Crashers, to grabbing our attention in ensemble pieces such as The A-Team and The Hangover, to bagging his first leading role with this year’s Limitless, Bradley Cooper is clearly going places.
Next up for him may well be an adaptation of John Milton’s 17th Century poem, Paradise Lost, in which he’ll play Lucifer. For the uninitiated, Milton’s work describes a battle fought in heaven between the archangel Michael and Lucifer who, despite being among the foremost of God’s angels, desired the position and glory of God himself and was cast down for his pride. Milton’s poem then goes on to cover Lucifer’s role in the tempting of Adam and Eve, resulting in them being cast out of Eden (the titular lost paradise).
Variety, who are carrying the story, say the film may be an action film, including aerial battles, which perhaps one might expect from a film about warring angels. Given that a combination of Biblical teaching and church tradition states that when Lucifer was cast down he took one third of all of the angels of heaven with him, we could be looking at battles on a pretty large (and correspondingly CG-heavy) scale. 3D is already being discussed.
Whether Cooper will play Lucifer before he starts work on The Crow, we do not know yet. Whether indeed he will formally sign onto either project remains up in the air. However, either role would seem to be a good fit for his combination of charisma and physicality. Watch this space.
