The brilliant Amy Adams has signed on to star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly anticipated, as-yet-untitled upcoming film, Deadline reports.
The film is set to start production later this month, and with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix already attached as the male lead and supporting, respectively, it’s definitely shaping up to be yet another classic from Anderson.
After a bit of a teaser image for the film came late last month, which was essentially just to show that the project is finally moving towards production after long delays, Adams’ casting makes all the more concrete. Fans of Anderson’s have long been awaiting this film, originally titled The Master and now without a name, so it’s great news to see that it’s finally finding its feet.
Adams will be playing the wife of Hoffman’s character, a man who returns from WWII in disillusion with everything he’s seen, and begins his own belief system in 1950s America, with Phoenix as his right-hand man. Adams has starred alongside Hoffman both in 2008’s Doubt, and 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War, and their chemistry should be all the more convincing having worked with each other before.
If these three castings are anything to go by, Anderson really has set himself up for another brilliant film. He is himself a five-time Academy Award-nominee. His lead, Hoffman, won Best Actor for Capote, and has been nominated twice since. Phoenix, too, has had two nominations for Gladiator and Walk the Line, and Adams herself has been nominated three times, most recently for last year’s The Fighter. With such a brilliant cast already attached, and with such a highly respected writer/director, the expectations will of course be high, but I think all his fans will be confident that he’ll rise to the challenge.
The Weinstein Company got the worldwide distribution rights last month, just before Cannes, and the up-and-coming Megan Ellison (True Grit) will be producing the film under her Annapurna Productions, alongside JoAnne Sellar and Daniel Lupi (both of whom have worked with Anderson on his last four feature films), with Ted Schipper (The Wettest County in the World) executive producing.
Adams is next going to be seen in the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as Jane and then The Muppets film early next year, and will be filming this with Anderson before going on to play Lois Lane for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. Though it may be wishful thinking, since Man of Steel is set to be released by the end of 2012 (if memory serves, it legally has to be), hopefully we’ll get to see Anderson’s project before the end of next year too.
