More news coming in today from the set of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, a film that was shooting in an ultra-secretive set for close to two months last winter.
IMDB is now listing the film as having a November 26th, 2021 release date in the United States, U.K. and Canada. That is not surprising news at all since production had officially wrapped in late November on PTA’s ninth feature film. The editing process must be going smoothly and now we are left to speculate if a Cannes premiere is in the works (that is if the festival even occurs this coming July). Venice could be another option.
As Mentioned, little is known about director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, curiously titled “Soggy Bottom,” if that’s even the title, except that it is set in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley during the 1970s and centers on a high school student who is also a child actor. Bradley Cooper was cast in the film just a few weeks ago and, this past weekend, the 45-year-old actor returned to the set with his Jon Peters-inspired get-up.
There have been rumors pointing towards the character Cooper plays in the film actually being Peters, the producer of 1976’s “A Star is Born,” leading to speculation that this could be about the making of the Streisand-Kristofferson film (cheeky kind-of-casting when you realize Cooper also wrote, directed and starred in his own remake of the film back in 2018). Based on leaked pictures from the secretive set, actress-musician Alana Haim’s does, in fact, look like Barbra Streisand’s from the same era.
Officially, Cooper and Haim are the only confirmed actors attached to star in Anderson's new project, but it’s quite clear that others have already landed roles. Seen on-set during the shoot in Encino, California, writer-director-actor-editor Benny Safdie who will play real-life politician Joe Wachs. A Los Angeles Councilmember, Wachs was a closeted gay man with a larger-than-life personality who didn’t come out until the late ‘90s.
Also spotted, Phillip Seymour Hoffman son, Cooper Alexander Hoffman. The casting of Cooper is quite touching when you come to realize that his father and PTA had a legendary four-film director-actor partnership (“Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” and “The Master.”) Hoffman Jr. is not a trained actor, he doesn’t even have an IMDB page to his name, and we don’t really know if he has landed a prominent role in “Soggy Bottom,” but this is the kind of casting that can’t help but put a smile on any movie fan’s face.
Principal Photography on “Soggy Bottom” began around twelve weeks ago, with a shooting schedule of 3+ months expected. They seemed to have barely made that deadline. Everyone, from the cast to the crew, has been COVID tested weekly. on-set There is no stage shooting planned for the film, as everything has already been shot on location — I expected nothing else from PTA.
For a while now, we’ve known that PTA was hard at work on the project. Back in April, it was revealed that Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio had passed on the Cooperf role in favor of working with Guillermo del Toro on “Nightmare Alley,” only to also pass on that one to work with Martin Scorsese on “Killers of the Flower Moon”.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.