Lady Gaga To Star In And Compose Music For Bradley Cooper’s ‘A Star Is Born’

Lady Gaga has always been a superstar, and now she’ll get to play one on the silver screen. The singer is confirmed to play the leading role in the upcoming Warner Bros. adaptation of the musical A Star Is Born. Actor Bradley Cooper will be making his directorial debut with the picture. The film is slated to enter production sometime next year.

Gaga will play Esther Blodgett, a “young woman whose dreams of stardom are helped by a self-destructive icon whose best days are behind him.” The film has already been adapted three times: once in 1937, once in 1954, with Judy Garland in Gaga’s role, and once in 1976 starring Barbra Streisand.

The singer will not only be starring in the film: Gaga will also be composing and performing original music for the film. While substantial information about the release of Lady Gaga’s upcoming fifth studio album has yet to be revealed, this news will hopefully tide Little Monsters over for now. Idolator predicts that Gaga’s fifth album “is expected late in the year,” after the release of Gaga’s second joint jazz project with Tony Bennett.

In a tweet, Gaga wrote that she was “elated to be directed by & starring w/ Bradley in this project,” calling Bradley Cooper a “brilliant visionary artist.”

Im elated to be directed by & starring w/ Bradley in this project. He's a brilliant visionary artist. #AStarIsBorn #AStarIsBornCooperGaga

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) August 17, 2016

Greg Silverman, the president of creative development for Warner Bros., expressed the studio’s excitement about Gaga and Cooper joining the film. “For those of us lucky enough to watch him work as an actor and producer, it has been clear that Bradley would make this transition to director. We are honored that he is doing it, here, at his home—Warner Bros.—and with Lady Gaga as a collaborator and co-star. The world is in for a treat as these great artists craft an all new vision of A Star is Born.”

Gaga’s previous acting experience is limited, and the singer’s flamboyant persona shows in her selection of roles. Lady Gaga has acted in campy films Machete Kills and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, but she is most well-known for appearing in the sixth season of American Horror Story: Hotel as the Countess. The role, in which Gaga played an undead vampire murderess, earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Limited Series. During her acceptance speech, Gaga called winning the award “one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Critics, however, were split on Gaga’s performance. Matt Zoller Seitz from Vulture wrote that “Gaga is terrible here in the way that Madonna was terrible in a lot of her ’90s films, at once too poised and too blank. But she’s Gaga, a performer who’s as much an athlete and sculptural object as a singer-songwriter, so in this context, she works.” On the other hand, Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly called Gaga “the show’s most potent symbol for all of its themes about our Bad Romance with fame, fortune, sex, sex, and more sex, materialism and consumerism, the denial of death and the corrupt want for cultural immortality.”

Lady Gaga was also nominated for an Oscar award for her original song “Til It Happens to You” from the documentary The Hunting Ground. Gaga performed the moving anthem about sexual assault during the broadcast.

Rumors first broke surrounding Gaga’s involvement in A Star Is Born in May, and Gaga did a screen test for the role in June.

While Lady Gaga is the final choice, superstar performer Beyonce was originally slated to play the role all the way back in 2011. Coincidentally, Lady Gaga and Beyonce have previously collaborated on Gaga’s hit 2010 song “Telephone.” The music video featured the pop queens showing off their dance moves and acting chops: Gaga appears as a convict who makes her triumphant exit from prison only to go on a killing spree with partner-in-crime Beyonce.

Is it too late to ask for A Star Is Born starring both Lady Gaga and Beyonce?

[Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]