One Battle After Another Continues Its Fight

Narrator enters stage right, sits down on a dimly lit wooden chair, and dabs forehead sweat with rag.

NARRATOR: These days, it’s just One Battle After Another.

Scene.

The upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson movie is one of the most anticipated films of the year, seemingly destined to be iconic even if it flops. It has a great cast and a respected auteur, and it was very, very expensive. That’s a recipe for, at the very least, a great awards season. Below, everything we know about the upcoming movie.

Trailer incoming.

Leonardo DiCaprio is on the run. As the trailer opens, he calls the mysterious rebellion group but forgets one of the necessary code words. “Let’s just not nitpick over the passwords,” he says. “This is Bob Ferguson, I was a part of the French 75, Steve Lockjaw just attacked my home, and I cannot remember for the life of my only child the answer of your question.” This does not bode well for Bob Ferguson.

Teyana Taylor plays DiCaprio’s lover and the mother of his child, who comes from a “whole line of revolutionaries.” Plus Benicio del Toro plays a guy DiCaprio repeatedly refers to as “Sensei.” Yeah, we’re making it out of the trenches with this one.

Who else is in the cast?

DiCaprio is the main draw, obviously, but don’t let his presence overshadow how stacked the rest of this cast is. Taylor (A Thousand and One), Regina Hall (Support the Girls), two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn (Milk), PTA fave Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza), and del Toro (Traffic) all star. Now that is a cast.

What is it about?

Uhhhh … unclear. The movie is reportedly based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, which tracks, given that PTA previously adapted Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. Vineland is very much a book about the ’80s — set in 1984, a.k.a. Reagan’s America, it follows a hippie named Zoyd Wheeler as he flashes back to the “free love” ’60s to explain how we arrived at the conservative era. One Battle After Another, meanwhile, is contemporary. So it’s hard to say how many liberties Anderson has taken with the source material in updating it.

What’s this about money?

Estimates by the The Wall Street Journal put the film’s cost at around $140 million. That’s not particularly notable for a blockbuster, but PTA isn’t known for creating blockbusters. His most successful movie at the box office was There Will Be Blood, which pulled in $76 million. His previous film, Licorice Pizza, cost just $40 million — that’s 100 million fewer dollars than his current project. Of course, the reason for the gamble is DiCaprio, one of the biggest stars around. Can he guarantee a hit? No, really, we’re asking.

When is it coming out?

One Battle After Another was originally scheduled to come out August 8, but on March 20, Warner Bros. pushed the release to September 16. The company explained the change as getting access to a global Imax release for its auteur film — the Oppenheimer playbook, basically. The move up in the year also gives the movie a slightly more awards-friendly release date, as most awards fare is released in the fall as opposed to the blockbuster summer. Leo vs. Timmy at the 2026 Oscars? That would be a battle for the ages.

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