Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn to Star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Next Movie

US filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson has assembled an all-star cast for his next project, which will likely be the most expensive of his career.

Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio, long rumored to be in the movie, and Sean Penn, who recently popped up in Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza”, will appear in the untitled movie. They join Regina Hall, the “Girls Trip” and “The Hate U Give” standout. 

Production on the movie, which Warner Bros. will produce, is set to start this month in California, the state where nearly all of Anderson’s movies have unfolded. 

The project has a contemporary setting and will be an ensemble piece, according to a source with knowledge of the production.

The movie is cloaked in secrecy, so much so that Warner Bros. has tried to keep the mere fact that it was producing the movie under wraps for months. But its price tag has raised eyebrows, with insiders saying the budget is approaching $100 million, a considerable sum for an Anderson picture. 

Anderson is one of the most masterful filmmakers in the game and a regular Oscar nominee with classics like “Phantom Thread” and “Boogie Nights” in his filmography. He is not, however, a commercial force. 

“Licorice Pizza,” for instance, lost tens of millions of dollars after to failing to recoup its $40 million budget. Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who were enlisted to run Warner Bros. 

In 2022, gave the green light to “Licorice Pizza” when they ran MGM. De Luca and Anderson go way back — the studio executive backed “Boogie Nights” when he was at New Line and Anderson was a rising auteur.

Nevertheless, the hope lies with DiCaprio, who recently starred in “Killers of the Flower Moon”, to help lift the pic’s popular appeal. 

DiCaprio continues to be one of the most bankable leading men, having starred in hits like “The Revenant” and “The Wolf of Wall Street”. 

At one point, he was set to star in “Boogie Nights,” but, in a sliding doors moment, he dropped out of that movie to make a little movie called “Titanic”, giving Mark Wahlberg his big opportunity. Anderson also tried to enlist Penn for the movie, envisioning him for the gonzo role played by Alfred Molina.

Under De Luca and Abdy, Warner Bros. has produced “Alto Knights,” a mob movie with Robert De Niro, an animated version of “Cat in the Hat” and a sequel to “Beetlejuice.”