Well, this is a little unusual. Bradley Cooper is officially guest-starring on the new CBS CBS -5.41% show Limitless in a “reoccurring basis.” To those unawares, the new show is based on Bradley Cooper’s 2011 feature film Limitless, which was one of his first successful attempts at being an “all by myself” face-on-the-poster movie star. The film, about a man who is given a drug that makes him the smartest man alive, opened with a solid $18.9m in March of 2011 and eventually earned a terrific $169m worldwide on a $27m budget for Relativity. The television show is now technically a sequel to said movie. It will star Jake McDorman as the new guy who discovers said brain-enhancing drug and ends up solving crimes for the FBI.
Oh, and it.will feature Mr. Cooper reprising his role from the film.
What’s interesting is that Bradley Cooper is probably the actor who right now has the least amount need to reprise a film role for the television version. He is the closest thing we have to a “new” face-on-the-poster movie star outside the realm of cheap comedies. And yet here he is, willing-and-able to appear on a CBS sci-fi crime drama, even one he is producing. It is another example of the quickly evaporating line between movies and TV. We see and hear stories every day about major film directors and major movie stars shifting to television or at least taking a swim in the respective sandbox. And the most popular ongoing cinematic franchise right now is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which basically operates as a mega-budget ongoing episodic television series.
Yes, there is an issue when so many prestigious actors and filmmakers feel that they cannot tell the stories they want to tell on the big screen, especially stories about minorities and women. And yes the emergence of various streaming and Web-only outlets has changed the very essence of what constitutes television and what qualifies as a feature film. But the result is that our best-and-brightest are seemingly willing to jump from one would-be medium to another for whatever suits their artistic inclinations. That’s, of course, good news for those who merely want quality entertainment regardless of the medium. But it’s still interesting that the former Alias supporting player is willing to dabble in not just in television but specifically broadcast network television.
This isn’t a high-profile HBO show or a Netflix NFLX -8.93% original. This is a television adaptation of a pulpy feature film airing on one of the five main broadcast networks. Bradley Cooper is an outright movie star. He just came off of the $542 million worldwide success of American Sniper and is headlining Cameron Crowe’s Aloha at the end of this month alongside Rachel McAdams and Emma Stone. He is not only a movie star but the kind of guy who is currently able to make so-called “old school” friendly movies that don’t necessarily depend on a franchise or a known property. Say what you will about the result, but even Serena, with Jennifer Lawrence, was the kind of old-fashioned star vehicle drama that used to be the kind of thing movie stars used as their bread-and-butter. He still gets to star in movies like Aloha and American Sniper and yet here he is still willing to reprise a film role for the television version.
What this means, to the extent that this one surprising example should mean anything at all, is that there is even less of a line between movies and TV. Bradley Cooper, one of our biggest movie stars, is willing and able to dip back into the television waters from which he came even though he is probably as powerful a Hollywood player as he will ever be. He didn’t have to find an HBO show to rehabilitate his artistic credibility, nor did he have to find a television series to give him the kind of high profile work that feature films were not providing. He is operating at or near the top of the Hollywood food chain, and yet he still is making an effort to show up in a semi-regular basis (pilot and Sweeps episodes?) for CBS adaption based on one of his old movies.
Maybe it means nothing beyond availability and a kind of self-promotion/self-interest. But it feels like yet another clear sign that television and movies, all movies and all television, are on relatively equal footing in terms of prestige and in terms of potential quality at least in the eyes of this generation’s current crop of would-be stars. And now I’m off to go watch last night’s The Flash, because dear lord that show is awesome.
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