Clint Eastwood to Replace Steven Spielberg on ‘American Sniper’

Variety reports Clint is in talks for Warner Bros. biopic starring Bradley Cooper.

After losing Steven Spielberg as director, Warners Bros. has acted quickly to find a director for “American Sniper” with Clint Eastwood in talks to helm the biopic starring Bradley Cooper. Spielberg’s apparent reason for dropping the project was due to his inability to merge his vision for the film with the fixed budget. Jason Hall penned the script for “Sniper” about a Navy SEAL recounting his military career that included more than 150 confirmed kills. Film is based on the book “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History” by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwan and Jim DeFelice. Cooper’s production company 22nd & Indiana Pictures and Andrew Lazar’s Mad Chance Productions optioned rights to the book a year ago. Eastwood is in production on the adaptation of “Jersey Boys” and would jump to “American Sniper” once the musical finishes filming.

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the greatest war memoirs of all time.