Monica Barbaro is getting ready to join the fray with the Ocean’s Eleven prequel.
The actress is in talks for a role in Warner Bros.‘ untitled feature that Bradley Cooper will direct, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Cooper and Margot Robbie will star in the movie alongside Wagner Moura as the villain.
Cooper is set to helm the film from a script he is writing after Carrie Solomon penned a previous draft. Plot details have not been shared for the project that is based on characters created by George Clayton Johnson and Jack Golden Russell.
Barbaro is set to star opposite Callum Turner in the romantic comedy One Night Only that Universal releases in August. She earned an Oscar nomination for her role as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown after breaking out in Top Gun: Maverick.
Warner Bros.’ franchise launched in 2001 with Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven that remade the studio’s 1960 heist movie Ocean’s 11, starring Frank Sinatra and other Rat Pack members. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon were among the stars of Soderbergh’s film trilogy that concluded with 2007’s Ocean’s Thirteen.
In 2018, Warner Bros. released Ocean’s Eight, director Gary Ross’ spinoff of Soderbergh’s trilogy that starred Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway. Since the release of the 2001 film, the franchise has surpassed $1.4 billion at the global box office.
Lee Isaac Chung was previously attached to direct the prequel before exiting amicably amid creative differences.
Hailing from LuckyChap, the new movie counts Cooper as a producer. Executive producing are Chung, Josey McNamara, Bronte Payne, Bobby Wilhelm, Jay Roach, Michelle Graham, Ashley Jay Sandberg, Gary Ross and Olivia Milch.
Deadline was first to report on Barbaro’s casting.