One of Hollywood’s top directors, Paul Thomas Anderson, hasn’t made a movie since Phantom Thread two years ago, nor had he given any indication as to his plans for his next project.
However, that changed this week, with a report in The Hollywood Reporter that Anderson will shoot his next film in 2020. The untitled project is a high school movie, set in San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. Call it Paul Thomas Anderson’s Dazed and Confused.
Anderson is a native of the Valley, and several of his better films – Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, and Inherent Vice – were set in Los Angeles, and the Valley among the locations.
Also, much like Anderson’s previous films, the project contains “a multitude of roles and could be ensemble in nature or have intersecting storylines.” The new film will be Anderson’s ninth feature, after Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, The Master, There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, and Phantom Thread.
What Anderson hasn’t done, however, is making a movie about young people, and it will be interesting to see what the director, who turns 50 next summer, can do with the genre (even if he wasn’t exactly the right age to have been in high school in the ’70s).
The news of the new film lead to many people on Twitter making versions of the same joke:
Daniel Day-Lewis is about to morph into a 17 year old high school junior with an attitude problem. https://t.co/un3jQYZiOD
— Robert Raiola (@Rob_Raiola) November 12, 2019
Daniel Day-Lewis, alas, has announced his retirement from acting, with his third Best Actor Oscar for Phantom Thread two years ago.
The film will go before the cameras in February, although the release date is unknown.
CORRECTION: The story incorrectly states that Daniel Day-Lewis won his third Best Actor Award for Phantom Thread when he was only nominated for it but never won the award
