EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has Paul Thomas Anderson set to direct Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn as well as Regina Hall in an untitled film that will begin production this year in California. Anderson wrote the script, and he will produce the film with Sara Murphy and Adam Somner.
The film is currently untitled and they’re keeping the logline under wraps. We have learned that it is a contemporary setting and it is the most commercial one PTA has attempted, with commensurate budget. It came out of a relationship that Warner Bros Picture Group co-chairs/CEOs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy built making PTA’s last film, Licorice Pizza, while they ran MGM. That film got three Oscar noms for Best Picture, and Best Screenplay and Best Director for PTA.
While DiCaprio, Penn and Hall are the leads, the new film will have a big ensemble cast that is still falling into place. Anderson has done ensemble in the past, notably with Boogie Nights, the film that De Luca shepherded when he headed production at New Line.
The film is significant for several reasons. Along with developments like the strategic alliance just formed with Tom Cruise and projects that include the Paul Greengrass-scripted/directed adaptation of the T.J. Newman bestselling novel Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 421, Warner Bros and De Luca and Abdy have the opportunity to change the narrative for the studio. It was a rough 2023, even as the studio finished with the top-grossing film in Barbie.
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DiCaprio was courted for many things in the wake of Killers of the Flower Moon, which has him in the thick of the Oscar race along with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone and Eric Roth, who adapted the David Grann book with Scorsese.
Penn stars in Daddio, teaming with Dakota Johnson in the Christy Hall-directed two-hander that was a fall festival favorite and acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, and he’s part of the Patricia Arquette-directed Gonzo Girl. Hall was executive producer on Gonzo Girl, and she next stars in the Geremy Jasper-directed rock opera Odessa for Searchlight. She most recently starred in Peacock’s The Best Man: The Final Chapter, and starred in the fest film Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
DiCaprio is repped by LBI and Hansen Jacobson; Penn by CAA and Hirsch Wallerstein; and Hall by Independent Artists Group. Anderson is with CAA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.