Bradley Cooper to Play Steve McQueen's Bullitt Character in New Film Directed by Steven Spielberg

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Bradley Cooper and Steven Spielberg in 2019

Bradley Cooper is teaming up with Steven Spielberg.

Cooper, 47, will play San Francisco police officer Frank Bullitt — a character made famous on the big screen by Steve McQueen in 1968's Bullitt — in an upcoming reimagining directed by Spielberg, 75, according to Deadline and Variety. Oscar-winning Spotlight screenwriter Josh Singer is writing the screenplay.

The outlets reported that McQueen's son Chad and granddaughter Molly will be executive producers.

Spielberg, whose new semi-autobiographical movie The Fabelmans is now in theaters, almost directed Cooper in the 2014 movie American Sniper but backed out and Clint Eastwood ultimately directed the drama.

The two are also collaborating on the upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, which Cooper is directing and starring in and Spielberg is producing. Singer also co-wrote it with Cooper.

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Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1968)

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Cooper told Variety earlier this year of Maestro, "I always knew that Steven Spielberg knew that I had this obsession with conducting. He had this biopic idea and was talking to me about potentially acting in it. But I had just been working on A Star Is Born. And I said, 'Listen, all I want to do is write and direct movies. 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," said Cooper. "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."

Bullitt, an adaptation of the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish, was directed by Peter Yates and also starred Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn and Robert Duvall.