Production of the film, which will be made for Warner Bros., began in January in California. In the first photos from the set, you could see Leonardo DiCaprio in a surprising make-up – with a mustache and in a casual outfit.
Details of the project, including the title, are kept secret. All we know is that its budget will be around $100 million – quite a considerable amount for an artist whose last film cost $40 million. “Licorice Pizza”, turned out to be a box office failure. On the other hand, the production received three Oscar nominations, including the most important one – for best picture, and also for Paul Thomas Anderson for directing and original script.
According to a person associated with the production, the artist’s new film, with many equal characters, will be set in the present day. There was also information that the film would be based on Tomas Pynchon’s book “Vineland”. This will not be the first time the director adapts a novel by an American writer to the screen – in 2014 he made “The Hidden Vice” based on Pynchon’s detective novel.
Described as “an uncompromising satire on American society,” “Vineland,” published in 1990, is set in 1984 California in the titular fictional town. However, through flashbacks, the book goes back to the 1960s – the times of the characters’ youth, then free and rebellious. Through the prism of the fate of the main characters, Pynchon describes twenty years of the greatest social changes in the United States, starting with the almost fascist rule of Nixon and ending with the re-election of Ronald Reagan – reads the official description of the book.
In addition to Del Toro, DiCaprio and Penn, the cast of the production also includes Alana Haim, who played one of the main roles in the above-mentioned film “Licorice Pizza”.
Del Toro, who previously starred with Anderson in “The Hidden Vice”, was recently seen in the Netflix thriller “Reptile”. He is also set to appear in Wes Anderson’s new film “The Phoenician Scheme.”