Precious director Lee Daniels has apparently settled on his next movie, a project entitled The Paperboy, which he wants Sofía Vergara, Bradley Cooper, and Alex Pettyfer to star in.

The story revolves around the lazy son of a newspaper publisher/editor who gets dragged into a murder investigation by his big brother, a seasoned journalist. They try to determine whether or not the man sentence to death row for the crime is truly responsible. Alex Pettyfer will play the younger slacker, Bradley Cooper will portray the big brother journalist, and Sofía Vergara will play the wife of a death row inmate. Offers have been made to all three actors, although it isn't clear if they have accepted the roles or not.

Lee Daniels will rewrite the script, which is based on the Peter Dexter novel of the same name. Peter Dexter wrote the novel which the HBO series Deadwood was based on, and also wrote the screenplay for Mulholland Falls.

No production schedule was revealed for the Relativity Media project. Lee Daniels has been attached to several projects over the past year, including The Butler, Selma, Agnes and his Brothers and Anna in the Tropics. It seems The Paperboy could very well be his follow-up to Precious.