Despite turning 88 later this month, Clint Eastwood likes to keep busy. Variety reports that he’s set to make The Mule his next directing project and he plans to star in the film as well. Eastwood hasn’t starred in a movie he’s directed since 2008’s Gran Torino and he hasn’t starred in any movie since 2012’s Trouble with the Curve. However, The Mule might see him starring opposite his American Sniper star Bradley Cooper.
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Here’s the official logline:
In “The Mule,” Clint Eastwood stars as Earl Stone, a man in his 80s who is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive—easy enough but, unbeknownst to Earl, he’s just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel, and also hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates.
Eastwood tackling the drug war seems…ill-advised. When you consider how much pain and misery the Mexican drug cartels regularly inflict on the Mexican people and then say, “The story I really want to tell is how this was tough for a working class white guy,” you’re delving into some really tricky territory. Matters aren’t really helped by the fact that Eastwood doesn’t really do nuance (I will fight Chris Cabin on this) as his main priority seems to be getting his movies in on time and under budget.
As for Cooper, he’s currently putting the finishing touches on his directorial debut, A Star Is Born, which got positive notices for the footage they showed from it out of CinemaCon. He’s also planning to star in and direct the Leonard Bernstein biopic Bernstein. That being said, it looks like Cooper and Eastwood have been looking to work together against since American Sniper, so The Mule looks like the best opportunity for that.