Licorice Pizza director Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, reportedly has a title: The Battle Of Baktan Cross.
A miasma of secrecy has long surrounded Boogie Nights and Licorice Pizza director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, which was shot under the production title BC Project.
According to reporter Jeff Sneider (via World of Reel), however, its title has emerged: The Battle Of Baktan Cross. That certainly lines up with set photographs that have dribbled out of the production, several of which show a police car with the words “City of Baktan Cross” emblazoned on the side.
We haven’t seen so much as a logline emerge from the production to date, though again, set photographs give us a few clues here: it appears to be some sort of heist thriller, with stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor both pictured wielding guns. In one image, DiCaprio’s clad in black with a face covering, and he and Taylor’s characters appear to be holding a security guard at gunpoint.
It’s been rumoured for a while that BC Project is secretly an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, and that DiCaprio has been cast in the role of Zoyd Wheeler, an ex-hippie who’s on the run from a federal agent named Brock Vond. In the book, the narrative moves between Zoyd’s counter-culture past in the 1960s and the Reagan-era mid-80s, where Brock has a daughter named Prairie.
Anderson has adapted a Pynchon novel before – 2014’s Inherent Vice – and he’s a self-professed fan of Vineland. He’s previously said that attempting to translate the author’s 400-page book to the screen was “too intimidating,” though it’s possible he’s since found his own way into the material.
Whatever the truth is, it’ll emerge fairly soon. Production wrapped in February, and the finished film is due in US cinemas on the 8th August 2025. Its cast is, as you’d expect from an Anderson movie, formidable: veterans Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn are joined by the fresher faces of Chase Infiniti (who could potentially be in the Prairie role), Regina Hall and Alana Haim, the latter the star of Anderson’s terrific Licorice Pizza from 2021.
More on The Battle Of Baktan Cross – including confirmation that this is indeed its official title – as we get it.
