Bradley Cooper-starring Paradise Lost movie is no more

John Milton fans everywhere, rejoice! That terrible-sounding film adaptation of the writer's epic poem Paradise Lost, which was set to feature Bradley Cooper as Lucifer, has been deep-sixed by producers after more than a few months of obstacles. (The film was also going to star total cutie and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter lead Benjamin Walker as the angel Gabriel, which is the only thing I'm going to miss about this bad idea.) You might be thinking that someone in Hollywood came to their senses and realized that Paradise Lost would make for a terrible movie, because it would either have to be six hours long or abridged to the point of insipidness, but no: the studio just decided that, with all the CGI needed to create the angelic battle scenes (kill me), the proposed budget was simply too high:

Legendary struggled to keep the budget at or below $120 million, thanks to the visual effects needed for the massive scenes of angel-on-angel warfare. Everyone on the film both above and below the line have been released from their job, and the studio — which has co-financed everything from The Hangover movies to all of Christopher Nolan’s Batman pictures — is walking away for now.

Unfortunately, the movie isn't so dead that we never have to worry about it rearing its head in the future; some deeply misguided person willing to fork over a cool $140 million or so could make it happen, but thankfully, that doesn't seem likely. I'm all for going to great source material when you're making a movie, but all I ask is that we be reasonable about it, and remember that a big-screen adaptation of The Iliad became Troy.