They collaborated on The Hangover trilogy, which unarguably sent their respective careers into the stratosphere. Now, Todd Phillips and Bradley Cooper are formalizing that partnership, by creating a production company, signing a three-year production deal with Warner Bros., and getting the ball rolling on their next film – Arms & The Dudes.
Based on a Rolling Stone article by Guy Lawson – the rights to which Phillips optioned in 2011 – Arms & The Dudes is about two Miami Beach stoners, who found themselves becoming arms dealers for the US Government. The twenty-something duo landed a $300 million contract with The Pentagon, to arm US allies in Afghanistan, before being prosecuted for fraud. Greg Silverman – Warner Bros. President of Creative Development and Worldwide Production – stated:
“Todd and Bradley have deep personal ties throughout the studio, and we couldn’t be more pleased that they are combining their immense talents into what promises to be one formidable production company. The entire Warner Bros family is excited about the great movies we know will come from this collaboration of two highly successful and original filmmakers.”
Arms & The Dudes will be the first of those movies, with Phillips in the director’s chair and Cooper as producer. Casting has yet to be announced, although it has been noted that Jonah Hill has been closely associated with table-reads of the script.
So the script is there, but we don’t yet know if Phillips has written it (as he did with The Hangover movies and Due Date, among others), nor do we know exactly when it will start shooting. What is interesting about this project, though, is that it seems to be a mix of Phillips’ usual ‘dude-bros in crazy situations’ fare, and more serious subject matter. Are we about to see the evolution of this filmmaker – from seemingly perpetual adolescence into a jovial kind of adulthood? It would certainly be a welcome change, as the diminishing returns of The Hangover series suggested. There’s only one way to find out though, and as momentum builds in the Arms & The Dudes production, we will keep you posted on further announcements.