I caught up with Paul Thomas Anderson this evening at Fred Armisen's Largo show and briefly spoke about various things and we can exclusively tell you, despite everything else circulating the net (and hopefully without getting in trouble) that it sounds like The Master is set to shoot sometime next month. More details about things hopefully soon.

Good news, highbrow literary/cinema aficionados! Vulture is happy to report that billionairess Megan Ellison, the 25-year-old daughter of Oracle boss Larry Ellison, appears to be coming to the rescue of two high-profile Paul Thomas Anderson movies: a foundering untitled Scientology drama (which may or may not end up being called The Master), and Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 stoner detective novel, Inherent Vice.


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What’s more, we’re told that Ellison is also in negotiations to co-finance Anderson's untitled religious drama (popularly known around the Internet as The Master), based on an original script about a disaffected disciple’s relationship with the founder of a new spiritual movement called the Cause — a not-so-thinly-veiled stand-in for Scientology — that examines the human need to believe in a Creator.

Anderson had been forced to shelve Master last September after Universal Pictures balked at its $35 million price tag; as a consequence of the delay, the film lost Jeremy Renner, who’d been attached to play the part of Freddie Sutton, an alcoholic acolyte of the Cause's founder who was to be played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Insiders say Renner, who’s buried in offers since his Oscar-nominated turn in Ben Affleck’s The Town, is no longer attached, but we’re told Hoffman is still keenly interested in doing the picture. It’s unclear which project Anderson would shoot first, but we’re heartened that either might be made this year.

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Despite these baseless, gossipy musings, the [Life & Style] magazine does go on to give a few details about the script (which they claim they got as an exclusive peek) as well as publish an actual page. For those who don't want to be spoiled in the slightest, you might want to stop reading now but I'd say spoils are pretty light here.

The movie features a contentious leader who's a science fiction novelist (Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had the same profession) and happens to be against traditional psychotherapy methods. So what's in the script that has the Church of Scientology quaking in it's boots? Drugging, secret missions, implants and claims of being able to cure leukemia in 36 hours are just a few taboo topics covered in the film. For now, the film is slated for a 2013 release.

Well, that's news to us. You can check out some more slight spoilers in the page of script below. (Thanks Bryan!)

...more in artilcle link....

Paul Thomas Anderson is truly getting back to work. We’ve known that he is prepping two scripts, one based on the Thomas Pynchon novel Inherent Vice, and the other a slight reworking of PTA’s own original ‘religious drama’ that has been said to be influenced by Scientology and once went by the title The Master.

Now we know that The Master is definitely going to be his next film. (Though ‘The Master’ is almost certainly not the final title, I’m going to use that to refer to the film here.) Harvey Weinstein has purchased worldwide rights to the film, which is already financed by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Productions. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix are confirmed for the two key roles, and the film will shoot starting June 13. Celebrate after the break.

Deadline says that the old script for The Master has been somewhat reworked, and offers this new recap:

Hoffman stars as a man who returns after witnessing the horrors of WWII and tries to rediscover who he is in post-war America. He creates a belief system, something that catches on with other lost souls.

That sounds like a deliberate step away from the much more overtly Scientology-influenced earlier draft.

...more in article link...

Paul Thomas Anderson Shoots ‘The Master’ in June, Joaquin Phoenix Confirmed, The Weinstein Co. Distributing
Slashfilm 9th May 2011
http://www.slashfilm.com/paul-thomas-an ... tributing/

Hmm, actually that synopsis sounds familiar i.e. Hubbard witnessing the horrors of his own fail in the navy during WWII as he tried to shoot up an island belonging to Mexico .... and so on.