IndieWire’s Eric Kohn has a weekend column that I highly recommend. It’s always a different topic and always an astute observation of the way the industry tends to operate.
There are also, almost in every piece, these little tidbits of intel that get buried in between the lines. It happened again today. This one has to do with Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film:
I’m told that Anderson’s mysterious next movie, rumored to star Joaquin Phoenix, Viggo Mortensen, and Regina Hall, has been set up at Warner Bros. Zaslav probably wants to keep that emerging deal in place.
So, now we have a good indication as to who will distribute the next PTA. It’s none other than Zaslav! He did mention earlier in the week that he wanted Warner Bros to be a place for filmmakers (then he gutted TCM).
PTA was supposed to shoot his next movie in July, but I reported on 05.05.23 that production had been delayed due to the strike.
Back in late November, PTA’s producer and casting director, Cassandra Kulukundis, posted a casting call that was looking for a “teenage girl who excels at Martial Arts”.
There have been rumours that the film might be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” but we don’t really know for sure. PTA has mentioned the novel numerous times over the years, and in a 2014 Time Out interview he even insinuated that he tried to script it: “I'd wanted to adapt “Vineland”, but I never had the courage.”
The details in Pynchon’s novel line up eerily well with what’s been rumored. There’s a father/daughter storyline, Reagan’s GOP plays a big role and even ninjas/martial arts figure in the plot.
PTA already adapted Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice” into a polarizing 2014 film and has been citing the author’s many novels for decades. There’s no reason to brush off the theory that he’d want to adapt Pynchon again.