Paul Thomas Anderson's Next Film is Set in 1984 California

ABC10 journalist Mark S. Allen seems to know what Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film is about, but he’s not dishing all the details out of respect for the cast and crew. However, he does divulge some interesting details …

In the video, Allen says the film takes place in Reagan-era 1984 and is being shot in some of the same places the former president inhabited during his time in Sacramento. So, it’s no coincidence that’s it’s being shot in Sacramento. He also says he believes the film will be released during the first quarter of 2025.

I have been theorizing, since March of 2023, that Anderson’s next film will be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland.” Allen’s intel, again, matches the rumors. Reagan, although not a central character in “Vineland,” looms large, all over Pynchon’s novel.

Here’s the synopsis for “Vineland”:

A group of Americans in Northern California in 1984 are struggling with the consequences of their lives in the sixties, still run by the passions of those times — sexual and political — which have refused to die. Among them is Zoyd Wheeler who is preparing for his annual act of televised insanity (for which he receives a government stipend) when an unwelcome face appears from out of his past.

Things just seem to be lining up in the direction of a Pynchon adaptation. There is no way to confirm it, and the trades would have already done that by now if they knew, but, at the very least, PTA’s latest must be partly inspired by the novel. They are filming at the same locations where “Vineland” takes place, and Leonardo DiCaprio has the same exact look as the character he’s supposed to be playing in the book, Zoyd Wheeler. Also, Wheeler’s daughter closely resembles actress Chase Infiniti who has been seen on-set with DiCaprio.

Oh, and on page 8 of “Vineland,” Zoyd says, "You called me, remember?" — in an on-set video taken by a fan, DiCaprio says practically the same line at the phone booth outside the grocery store.

It also looks as though the project is being shot, on film, spherically in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio by DP Michael Bauman. As we’ve seen from the leaked BTS footage, PTA’s latest has a lot of car chases, helicopters, police vehicles — the budget is said to be $115 million. With the already mentioned DiCaprio and Infiniti, some of the other actors taking part in the film include Sean Penn, Alan Haim and Teyana Taylor.