Best of Enemies: Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale eyeing a Cold War spy film

Last Updated on December 29, 2023

War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing unless you’re courting Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale to star in your upcoming Cold War spy film., Best of Enemies. The duo co-starred alongside each other in David O. Russell’s American Hustle, and now they could reunite for a movie based on the novel Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War by Eric Dezenhall and Gus Russo.

American Hustle scribe Eric Warren Singer is penning the script, with Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven producing. According to Deadline, Netflix and Apple are rubbing their paws together at the thought of snapping up the project. However, the filmmakers could shop the feature for several outlets to see who will fork over the most dough. Best of Enemies does not have a director, though whispers say Bradley Cooper could get behind the camera.

Here’s a synopsis for Dezenhall and Russo’s novel Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War, courtesy of Amazon:

In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, DC intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA’s counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men, already notorious iconoclasts within their respective agencies, were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the urgent final days of the Cold War, but instead, the men ended up becoming the best of friends-blood brothers. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, the Russian Mafia, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs of the past half-century.

In Best of Enemies, two espionage cowboys reveal how they became key behind-the-scenes players in solving some of the most celebrated spy stories of the twentieth century, including the crucial discovery of the Soviet mole Robert Hanssen, the 2010 Spy Swap which freed Gennady from Soviet imprisonment, and how Robert De Niro played a real-life role in helping Gennady stay alive during his incarceration in Russia after being falsely accused of spying for the Americans. Through their eyes, we see the distinctions between the Russian and American methods of conducting espionage and the painful birth of the new Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, dreams he can roll back to the ideals of the old USSR.

Sources close to the project say Cooper will play Platt, with Bale playing Vasilenko.

What did you think of Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale’s performances in American Hustle? Are you excited about them potentially reuniting for Best of Enemies? The story sounds intense, with plenty of room for drama, deception, and deadly consequences. Who should direct the film? Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.