Bradley Cooper has come a long way since his early days as an R-rated comedy star. He’s racked up four Oscar nominations for his acting work (and another five as a producer and writer), and his upcoming Netflix passion project “Maestro” could be a major player in the upcoming award season. But Cooper’s highbrow success hasn’t lessened his affection for the comedy franchise that helped make him a superstar.
Appearing on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” to promote “Maestro,” Cooper revealed that he would be eager to return for a fourth “Hangover” movie if his co-stars Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms and director Todd Phillips returned.
“I would probably do ‘Hangover 4’ in an instant,” Cooper said. “Just because I love Todd, I love Zach, I love Ed so much, I probably would.”
The “Hangover” franchise has been dormant since 2013’s “The Hangover Part III,” which opened to largely negative reviews but grossed $362 million worldwide on a $103 million budget. But while Cooper is game for a fourth adventure, he cautioned that Phillips is unlikely to return to his raunchy comedy roots amid his current success with the “Joker” films.
“I don’t think Todd is ever going to do that,” he said.
Phillips earned three Oscar nominations in 2020 for his polarizing, Joaquin Phoenix-led take on the iconic Batman villain. He returned to direct the musical sequel “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which is set to open in 2024. In a 2019 interview, Phillips explained that he began to focus on the franchise after losing interest in comedy due to cultural shifts that he felt stifled his humor.
“There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore — I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you,” Phillips said in 2019. “It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies — I think that what comedies, in general, all have in common — is they’re irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but fuck comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.’ And so that’s really where that came from.”
