When Paul Thomas Anderson stops filming, there’s always the curiosity as to what he will work on next. As soon as we all see THE MASTER, we will be hungry for more of what Anderson has to bring to his cinematic portfolio.
The director gave a heads up to ScreenDaily (via /Film):
ScreenDaily: What’s next?
PTA: I’m hoping we can get Inherent Vice going soon. That’s what I’m writing now. It’s taking my mind of this, actually. It’s a lot of fun. It’s such a different piece, though. It’s nice to have a collaborator, as it were, through working on the book.
SD:Are you in touch with Thomas Pynchon?
PTA: I try to communicate with the book, mainly.
In another interview with Empire, he compared the material to being “like a Cheech and Chong movie”. He said that adapting is “just gonna be great and, hopefully, fun.”. Anderson continued on about how long it might take, the difficulty in adapting, and on meeting the author:
“But although Anderson has been working on bringing the Gravity Rainbow author’s most accessible work to the big screen for several years, it’s not clear exactly when it will happen: “Hopefully not long. I’d like to have a few years of being more productive. But we’ll see.” As for the difficulty in adapting the reclusive writer’s novel, Anderson admits it’s not going to be easy. “There’s so much. But it’s fun too, be because they’re his words, and… it’s like taking your dad’s car for a ride, y’know?” Does this mean Anderson has met the famously publicity-shy author yet? “If I told you I’d have to kill you. Because Thomas Pynchon… You know who he is? Terry Malick.”
INHERENT VICE is the story of, “a 1970s Californian detective story that sees a stoner private eye called Larry “Doc” Sportello helping a former lover with an intriguing and ever-so-complicated, shaggy-dog-story of a case involving infidelity, mental institutions and policemen called “Bigfoot”.” Robert Downey Jr. is still attached to star.