We finally have concrete news at what Paul Thomas Anderson‘s next feature will be, and when we can expect it. The There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and Punch-Drunk Love auteur will begin production on his religious drama (with the working title The Master) this June. Deadline reports that The Weinstein Company just grabbed worldwide distribution rights and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix are officially confirmed to star.
As we previously reported, film savior Megan Ellison and her company Annapurna Productions will finance the film. This puts PTA’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon‘s novel Inherent Vice on the backburner. After some reported script issues, it looks like Anderson has “greatly overhauled the script” and you can check out a new synopsis below.
Hoffman stars as a man who returns after witnessing the horrors of WWII and tries to rediscover who he is in post-war America. He creates a belief system, something that catches on with other lost souls.
We already know Phoenix will star as his apprentice, but Madisen Beaty (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Amy Adams (The Fighter), Lena Endre (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Laura Dern (Jurassic Park) are all of interest to Anderson. It’s hard to express how excited I am to see a new PTA film. Even more, this could be the film he is experimenting with 65mm film stock on. 2012 is shaping up to be an outstanding year for cinema and The Weinstein Company in particular. We’ll likely see this hit theaters and they have domestic rights for Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained and Andrew Dominik‘s Cogan’s Trade, to name just a few.
The Master will shoot for around $35 million beginning June 13th.
Are you excited to finally hear a PTA film is going into production?