The Weinstein Company has won the worldwide distribution rights for director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson‘s upcoming untitled film, which already has Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix attached to star. It’s been four years since Anderson’s last project, the Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood.
It’s being reported that Anderson is interested in several actresses for the project including Madisen Beaty (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Amy Adams (Doubt, Enchanted), Lena Endre (The Millennium Trilogy), and Laura Dern (Jurassic Park).
Anderson has been working on this project, originally titled The Master, for a long time and has recently greatly overhauled the script. The story has Hoffman starring “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.”
The project was originally set up at Universal, but they decided to back off because of the $35 million budget and possibly because of the subject matter. The film is being financed by Megan Ellison‘s Annapurna banner with the plan being to try and make the film for at or near the originally planned budget.
The film is currently set to begin production on June 13th.
(Source: Deadline)