Batter Up: Bradley Cooper Plays Baseball for Disney

I can see Bradley Cooper in this type of movie, and even though The A-Team won't be the hit THe Hangover was, his stock is still on the rise. Now he's getting a chance to lead his own Disney feel-good sports movie, according to Movie Web. "The dramedy centers on a baseball player who gets injured and has to go back to the minors where the only place he can find lodging is in a senior citizens' home," notes Movie Web. "There, he meets an old baseball guru who helps lead him back." Mmm...schmaltz! There's no script yet, just a pitch from Allan Loeb, whose Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps comes out this fall and who has been in high demand ever since that screenplay started making the rounds. Disney has had success with this sort of thing in the past; look at films like The Rookie (but not The Express). New CEO Rich Ross was reportedly steamed that his studio didn't pick up The Blind Side, and instead, struggled through last fall and winter with expensive cartoons like A Christmas Carol and The Princess and the Frog and underwhelming stuff like Old Dogs. What would make this script really zing is if, while he's at the senior citizens' home, Cooper's baseball player character runs into Elvis and a black JFK. There's yer goldmine, Hollywood. (I wonder what's happening with that Bubba Ho-Tep sequel, anyway...) Cooper, it seems, has missed out on the comic book sweepstakes, although he could have easily played Captain America, Hawkeye, or even The Flash, a role he might be too old for. Maybe Aquaman, if DC really takes that movie seriously, but it's going to be so tough to put on screen. After The Hangover, it was common to hear Cooper's name for a lot of things, but he took The A-Team, and I thought he was the best thing about the movie. It may not franchise, however, so if he's hoping for one of those, he's going to have to keep looking.