Bradley Cooper finally confirms his directorial follow-up to A Star Is Born

We have another tear-jerking musical on the way...

Believe it or not, Bradley Cooper has been nominated for EIGHT Academy Awards already, but hasn't won a single one of them. Three of those were for A Star Is Born, which nabbed Cooper nominations for Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture, and considering the huge success of that movie (especially in Ireland) in 2018, all eyes have been on what Cooper would decide to direct next. He's kept busy as an actor, with roles in Avengers: Endgame, Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley since then, but this week he confirmed that his next directorial outing will begin filming in May. Maestro will tell the story of esteemed Broadway composer Leonard Bernstein (played by Cooper), with Carey Mulligan signed on to play Bernstein's wife, Felicia Montealegre, and Succession's Jeremy Strong as biographer John Gruen. Bernstein was the man behind music for West Side Story and On The Waterfront, and Cooper revealed to Mahershala Ali during Variety's Actors on Actors series the following: "I wanted to be a conductor since I was a kid. I was obsessed with it, asked Santa Claus for a baton when I was 8. Listening to music, falling in love with it and being able to really know every single moment of a piece, like Tchaikovsky's 'Opus 35' in D major, this violin concerto. I could do it as if I know everything about it without really being able to speak the language, obviously.” Much like A Star Is Born, which was originally to be directed by Clint Eastwood, Maestro was lined up to be helmed by another director: Steven Spielberg. But Cooper was looking for his next directing gig, and the stars aligned with Spielberg dropped out of the project, with Cooper saying: "I [told Spielberg], 'I always felt like I could play a conductor, but may I research the material and see if I can write it and direct it? Would you let me do that?' Steven has a lot of interests - he’ll just choose one thing and all of the other things will be on hold. I think he knew he wasn't going to make that movie for a while. He was kind enough to hand it off to me, and that's what I've been doing for the last four and a half years, and we start shooting in May." Back in 2018, JOE spoke to Cooper about A Star Is Born and asked about the rumours of him potentially directing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (this was before James Gunn had been rehired for the gig), and we also asked about doing the Bernstein biopic, to which Cooper replied: "Well, we'll see."