Bradley Cooper is starring in Steven Spielberg’s Bullitt movie
Cooper will take on the role made famous by Steve McQueen in 1968
Aux News Cooper
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.
34 Comments
Bullitt -> Bullet
For someone who has a blank check to make whatever movies he wants to use that power on remaking classics is a waste.
it’s Spielberg, he’s the GOAT at this type of stuff, and if it’s something that interests him enough to do it, I’m curious to see what he can do with it. I had the same reaction as yours when I heard about West Side Story, I am not a fan of it or musicals in general, but he did a good job with it, so I will give Bullitt a chance.
If the movie business were different right now I wouldn’t care, but there is such a dearth of original films at the scale Spielberg is capable of executing at it almost feels irresponsible to do retreads. I’m sure the Fabelmans is a nice movie but I want another movie like Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park.
Remaking movies from the ‘60s strikes me as he’s trying to recreate the movie magic from his youth and bring it to present day audiences.
As someone who rails against remakes being made, I find myself not having a problem with this one. The original is a deadly dull film with a couple of key exceptions, and I would like to see Cooper in what I assume will be a gritty police procedural.
I wouldn’t say ‘deadly dull’, but it’s definitely an otherwise ok movie with a single standout action scene. I’m not sure I get why it needs a remake, given that there are a lot of other stories in the same vein that could be told, but it’s not like it couldn’t be improved by a lot.
It sounds like, from the article, that the story in this “remake” is based on something else than the original movie. I would guess they’ll keep the overall aesthetic, the lead character’s persona, and probably have a similar car chase, but ditch most of the rest of the original story beats.
Not necessarily a police film, but The Midnight Meat Train is kinda gritty and procedural*. *based on my memory of seeing it over a decade ago plus COVID time
Oh good, the King of Meh is starring in a meh remake. Meh.
all of it anchored by McQueen’s unflappable cool Steve McQueen was incredibly vicious and abusive. Notorious psychopath. Which makes me surprised to read “unflappable cool” on the same site that can’t take people like Dave Chappelle to task fast enough, or often enough. I thought bad people made you sad, AV Club.I wish Paul Walker were still alive. He was like Steve McQueen, if Steve McQueen had actually been cool in any way.
I just rewatched the original and I have to say it holds up just fine and still looks great. Very much a nice piece of work for its era and trying to rebottle it seems pointless and good luck trying to match Lalo Schifrin’s score…
Eh, aside from the car chase the original hasn’t aged very well. Personally i see Cooper more as a Vanishing Point guy but Bullitt would be OK. i think Ryan Gosling would be a better choice but i guess he already had his car chase movie, with Alfred Brooks as the villain no less.
They could remake the Vanishing Point remake.
possibly unpopular opinion—I have seen the Bullitt car chase a few times before, and I just watched the embedded clip again, and it just leaves me cold. I think it has been overhyped and mythologized to death as the “gold standard” for car chases. Spielberg could probably make a better version of that scene on quaaludes.On a side note, I now see what a great fit Damian Lewis was to play McQueen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
“Spielberg could probably make a better version of that scene on quaaludes.”
Yeah. Uh huh.
Nostalgia fades critical flaws. In its day the chase scene was unprecedented, but it hasn’t worn well over the last 55 years.
55 years. Few things — and few of us — have worn very well over the last 55 years.
Hey, I’m in much better shape than I was 55 years ago, when I was just atoms scattered all across the planet’s surface and oceans.
It’s unfortunate that was your reaction. I only watched Bullitt after Breihan covered it for A History of Violence here some years ago. (Gods, I miss those columns.) I was not expecting much (and the movie on the whole is indeed not much), but I was fucking riveted for that car chase. I love how it relies only on sound effects (rather than score and dialogue) to increase the tension. I love how insanely tense it is, but in a way that feels more real than more recent cinema car chases. It’s partly due to the choice to shoot a lot of it from inside the cars while on the hilly San Francisco streets. (Even watching it just now, I tensed up as they hit the cross streets on those hills.) It feels very visceral in a way a lot of Hollywood car chase scenes just don’t anymore. As much as I deeply respect Spielberg as a filmmaker, I do question whether he can top it.
I had similar reaction when I watched Psycho in like 1995 for a class. I thought it was really dull and slow-paced and not at all scary. My mother, on the other hand, who saw it in the theater when it was brand new would not sit in the room while I watched it.
The Exorcist *still* scares me a little at my advanced age but my kids think it’s hilarious. Go figure.
Citizen Kane effect. I saw Kane in a full-size theater on a silver nitrate print for the first time, and I was bored out of my mind. In retrospect I understand why it was such a groundbreaking movie, but everything it did I’d already seen in a hundred other movies by the time I saw it, so it just had no impact.I watched it again later (when I was older) and appreciated it a lot more, but it’s never going to be on my list of movies I love or will watch at the drop of a hat.
Let’s remake a movie with one of the most charismatic American leads ever and recast him with the most vanilla, boring-ass actor we can think of.
Why?!?! Bullitt is a movie defined by a single car chase, but the rest of the movie isn’t great and mostly forgettable… I can barely remember what it’s about.
I just rewatched Bullitt recently. Know what that movie has going for it? Steve McQueen, and that chase. And that’s ALL. The crime plot is predictable and I can’t remember any of the supporting characters.I’m not sure Bullitt has anything to make modern audiences say “wow, let’s see what they did to make a new one!” I like Bradley Cooper fine but what will they do? Will the chase last longer with the car jumping higher over the SF hills? Will Bullitt wear bigger guns in backward shoulder holsters? It’s Spielberg so maybe there will be cool lighting tricks with some wind machines.
Oddly enough, you’re providing a great argument for a remake. I’ve always thought it made a level of fiscal sense to remake movies that were already great, though it made no creative sense (They’re already great, so the likelihood of a remake being worse is pretty high).Remaking movies that weren’t firing on all cylinders is a much better idea from a creative standpoint, since it’s got the door open to take the good parts of the original and combine them with better parts that would make the movie as a whole into the definitive version. But usually those types of movies that would be good for that are, at best, cult classics with little name recognition.Bullitt is the best of both worlds. It’s very well known, making it a solid start from a commercial standpoint. Plus, it’s not actually that great, so there’s plenty of space for a new one to improve on it. In the hands of someone like Spielberg, it could well be a really good detective thriller. I’m more excited for this now than I was before I read your comment, now that I think of it.
Soderbergh took the basic ‘bank heist starring a large cast of famous people’ format and made his version of Ocean’s Eleven the definitive one. I agree with you, it wouldn’t be that crazy to think Spielberg could do something similar.
Hm. I don’t entirely disagree with the idea of a remake – just that I always would rather remake a movie that failed in what it tried to do. (Nah, no one in the movie-making business thinks the way I do..)I would like the new Bullitt a period film, mostly because it’s hard for me to imagine the chase being staged with modern cars.[As much as I like the chase scene in Bullitt, the one in French Connection is better…. and I think Friedkin topped that one when he did To Live and Die in L.A.]
“wow, let’s see what they did to make a new one!”
They got some black and queer folks in there now.
We’ll learn that Bullitt is who he is because he came from a broken home.
Will there be “hot merging action”?
Missed their shot.
I don’t really understand why this is a “Bullit” movie. I think Spielberg/Cooper is enough to sell people on the flick. I don’t think “oh, yeah. Bullit. It had a car chase, right?” is going to put a lot more asses in seats.