Paul Thomas Anderson Has Already Chosen His Next Film, Jonny Greenwood Says

Last week, it was announced that Paul Thomas Anderson had shot a concert film, “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall,” which will world premiere at the New York Film Festival in October. But despite PTA’s reputation for taking his time between narrative features, it looks like his next movie could arrive sooner than expected.

According to PTA’s longtime composer Jonny Greenwood, who spoke to Screen Daily, the filmmaker has already settled on his next project, and work on the score is underway.

Paul is getting close to pressing the button on the next film, I believe, and I’m already trying to learn a new instrument that would be central to it. The process is quite protracted.

It may well not even be a while. He had a few ideas and I think he’s chosen one and he seems to be gaining momentum again. You think the [next] film is going to take years to do, and often they do. But then he turned “Licorice Pizza” around in a matter of months.

So what could the next PTA movie be?

At this point, it’s anybody’s guess, but one project fans will inevitably bring up is the 1940s jazz film he has been hinting at for years. Denzel Washington is known to be attached after confirming that he met with PTA. The film is reportedly set during the golden age of Los Angeles’ “Little Harlem,” when the Hotel Dunbar in South Central L.A. was at the center of a thriving African-American arts and music scene.

Tiffany Haddish, who is attached for a role, previously offered IndieWire some insight into what that project might look like. Anderson has also cited crime novelist Chester Himes as one of his favorite authors, raising another intriguing possibility: could he be adapting Himes’ “A Rage in Harlem”? The 1957 novel is set in Harlem and could certainly fit the period and crime-inflected world PTA has been circling.

For now, though, that remains pure speculation. Whatever the film is, Greenwood’s comments suggest PTA has finally picked a direction and is moving toward making it.

PTA takes his time in between projects, especially compared with other major filmmakers. After “There Will Be Blood” in 2007, he waited five years before returning with “The Master” in 2012. He released “Phantom Thread” in 2017, but it took another four years for “Licorice Pizza” to arrive in 2021. His latest film, “One Battle After Another,” followed another four-year gap in 2025.