Jackson Maine may have found his next gig.

Bradley Cooper is in very early talks to replace Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead in director Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. The Hollywood Reporter had the exclusive Friday.

Should the A Star Is Born director and star sign on to the film, he will be playing Stan Carlisle, an ambitious con man who partners with a female psychiatrist to dupe folks with a “fake” mentalist routine. Eventually, however, the shrink turns the tables on Stan.

DiCaprio was circling the much-anticipated project for a long time, but THR‘s sources said the actor was unable to close a deal. The trade notes that it is also unclear if Cooper’s deal will close as talks are in such an early phase.

Alley, based on a book by William Lindsay Gresham, was previously turned into a 20th Century Fox movie starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondel. Del Toro’s take, with a script he co-wrote with Kim Morgan, will reportedly embellish the story’s more “supernatural/genre-y” aspects, which isn’t surprising coming from the Oscar-winning director of The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Should Cooper sign on, it will mark the first time del Toro and the actor have worked together — making Nightmare Alley even more must-see than it already is.

No release date has been revealed, but you can expect it to hit theaters sometime in 2020.

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