Paul Thomas Anderson ‘has chosen’ his next feature film – but what is it?

Paul Thomas Anderson has decided on the feature film that will follow his Oscar-winning One Battle After Another. That’s according to his longtime collaborator Jonny Greenwood, who has composed the scores for every one of Anderson’s films since There Will Be Blood in 2007. In a new interview with ScreenDaily, Greenwood – also the lead guitarist of the band Radiohead – said that Anderson is “getting close to pressing the button on the next film” and that he has “chosen” an idea.

After the interviewer remarked that he didn’t think a new Anderson film was “a possibility for a while”, Greenwood replied: “It may well not even be a while, but he had a few ideas and I think he’s chosen one and he seems to be gaining momentum again. But then he turned [the 2021 romance] Licorice Pizza around in a matter of months.” Anderson, who won Best Director and Best Picture for last year’s Thomas Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another, is widely regarded as one of the best filmmakers working today. While details over the nature of the new project are currently unknown, various possibilities have been mooted by fans.

Much of the chatter has focused on one idea in particular: a jazz epic starring Denzel Washington. In 2024, Washington stated that he had spoken to Anderson about a prospective collaboration, with fans speculating that this would be set amid LA’s “Little Harlem” jazz renaissance in the 1940s – an idea that has trailed Anderson for years. New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial.

Plan auto-renews until cancelled. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Girls Trip star Tiffany Haddish previously said that she had spoken with the filmmaker about such a project, telling IndieWire: “You know how they got ‘Harlem Nights’?

I was like, ‘What if we did “South Central Nights”,’ like what South Central used to be? How LA was this place where you could come and be free, but it was still very segregated, and how that worked in the relationships, the interracial relationships, and all that dynamic?” Anderson has also expressed a desire to work again with Benicio del Toro, who featured in Inherent Vice (2015) and One Battle After Another. Away from his narrative film oeuvre, Anderson also recently directed a concert film focusing on Cameron Winter, the 24-year-old lead singer of the rock band Geese.

Filmed during one of Winter’s solo gigs at Carnegie Hall in December 2025, the film, titled Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall, is released in cinemas later this year. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies