Jeremy Allen White to Star as Bruce Springsteen in A24's Biopic

A few months ago, Roger Friedman reported that director Scott Cooper was working on a biopic tackling legendary singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen’s recording of his 1982 landmark album, “Nebraska.”

I then did my own digging and learned that the film would be based off of Warren Zanes’ book “Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska”. Cooper would be writing the screenplay, adapting Zanes’ tackling of Springsteen’s turbulent psyche during this time in his life.

We now have a major update, via Deadline. A24 is now on board and “The Bear” star, Jeremy Allen White, is top choice to play Springsteen. A fall shoot in New Jersey is being eyed. Springsteen has been extensively consulting with Cooper on the film and the project seems to be moving along.

The “Nebraska” story might just be the most fascinating time period of Springsteen’s career. During that time, the singer was going through a severe bout of depression and anxiety — he just didn’t know. He created art through it, battling his inner demons by recording the spooky “Nebraska” tracks with a home recorder, alone in a bedroom, a “matter of months from a breakdown.”

In his memoir “Born to Run,” Springsteen writes of that time: “My depression is spewing like an oil spill …Its black sludge is threatening to smother every last living part of me.”

So it goes, one of the outtakes that emanated from the Nebraska bedroom sessions turned out to be a song called “Born in the USA.” A few years later, Springsteen would go on to re-record it, in a proper studio, with the E-Street Band, and the rest is the stuff of rock and roll history.

Cooper is coming off 2022’s Edgar Allen Poe Film, “The Pale Blue Eye.” His other directing credits include “Crazy Heart,” “Black Mass,” “Hostiles,” and “Out of the Furnace” — coincidentally, or not, Cooper admitted he was obsessively listening to “Nebraska” while writing ‘Furnace.’