‘Is This Thing On?’ Trailer: Bradley Cooper Finds Truth, Comedy, and Heartbreak in New Dramedy With Will Arnett & Laura Dern

Entertainment NewsTrailersUpcoming ReleasesFilmMoviesDirectorsDramaComedyAwards ContendersNYFFComedianFilmmakersRomanceTheatrical Releases

Nov 19

Written By Jonathan P. Moustakas

Will Arnet in Bradley Cooper’s new Directorial Debut ‘Is This Thing On?’. | **Photo by: Jason McDonald - Searchlight Pictures**

Bradley Cooper turns midlife unraveling into something tender, funny, and surprisingly hopeful in a dramedy that hits closer to home than most studio films dare.

Searchlight has dropped the latest trailer for Is This Thing On?, Bradley Cooper’s third directorial outing — and his most quietly personal. Starring Will Arnett and Laura Dern, the film follows a marriage drifting toward collapse while both partners try to figure out who they are when the roles they’ve relied on no longer fit.

Arnett plays Alex, a middle-aged New Yorker staring down divorce, stalled ambition, and the uncomfortable truth that he can’t coast on old instincts anymore. In a bid to reclaim some sense of purpose, he dives into the downtown comedy scene — not to escape reality, but to interrogate it. Dern’s Tess, meanwhile, confronts a different kind of reckoning. The sacrifices she made as a wife and mother aren’t theoretical anymore; they cost her something real, and she wants it back.

Together, they navigate the maze of co-parenting, identity, reinvention, and the question Cooper threads through the trailer: what does love look like after the version you built collapses?

Cooper told Vanity Fair that the story isn’t a midlife crisis narrative — it’s a midlife catharsis. That framing shows in the trailer, which moves between quiet emotional observation and the messy, lived-in humor that comes from two people trying to fix themselves without breaking each other further.

The cast is stacked: Cooper appears onscreen alongside Arnett and Dern, joined by Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Scott Icenogle, and British comedian John Bishop, whose own story inspired the film. Cooper and Arnett co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Chappell, with Cooper, Arnett, Weston Middleton, and Kris Thykier producing.

POPULAR ON THE CINEMA GROUP

The film makes its world premiere October 10 as the closing-night selection of the New York Film Festival — a fitting choice, given how deeply the city informs its energy. “NYC injects an energy into every aspect of filmmaking that just can’t be replicated,” Cooper said. That sensibility is all over the footage: subway platforms, cramped bars, the unspoken rhythms of a city full of people reinventing themselves every day.

Is This Thing On? opens December 19 via Searchlight Pictures, positioned firmly for awards chatter at the end of the year and giving Cooper his third filmmaking showcase after A Star Is Born and Maestro.