[6] The film, released by Fox Searchlight Pictures, received widespread critical acclaim and a number of accolades, including the Academy Awards for Best Actor (Bridges) and Best Original Song.

Among Crazy Heart's fans were director Ridley Scott and producer Michael Costigan, as well as executives at Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way.

Cooper was offered the opportunity to develop The Low Dweller, a spec script written by Brad Ingelsby that had DiCaprio and Scott attached, as actor and director respectively.

[8] Relativity Media put the film, now titled Out of the Furnace, into production in 2012, with Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson and Casey Affleck leading the ensemble cast.

[9] In January 2014, Cooper became attached to rewrite and direct Black Mass,[10] a crime drama based the book of the same name by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill,[11] described as the "true story of Billy Bulger, Whitey Bulger, FBI agent John Connolly and the FBI's witness protection program that was created by J. Edgar Hoover.

[20] Cooper's next film was the supernatural horror story Antlers, starring Keri Russell and Jesse Plemons and co-produced by Guillermo del Toro, which was released in 2021.

[24][25] In 2019, it was announced Cooper would direct Valhalla with Christian Bale starring, as well as a film adapting Jess Walter’s Over Tumbled Graves.

[27][4] Films that have influenced Cooper include: Robert Altman's Nashville, Terrence Malick's Badlands, John Huston's Fat City and Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show.