With a planned August start date having come and gone with no news, things weren’t exactly looking upbeat for Paul Thomas Anderson’s 50s-set religious drama tentatively titled “The Master.” Now, however, comes confirmation of the film’s temporary demise with potential star Jeremy Renner unfortunately revealing to Total Film’s latest print edition that it has been “postponed indefinitely at this point.”
“I was really bummed about that,” Renner revealed. “It really kind of stalled because when we were rehearsing — Phil, Paul and myself — we kept coming up against a wall that we couldn’t overcome. Or at least Paul couldn’t overcome.”
And confirming the project’s stalemate, Hoffman revealed in an interview with The Playlist during press rounds for “Jack Goes Boating” that “I don’t have any new information [‘The Master’]. I really mean that, I’m not being obtuse. I don’t quite know what that is at the moment, but hopefully I will and hopefully I’ll be part of something soon. It would be great to work with him again.”
It’s a tragic turn for the highly promising project but is it merely a hurdle for the production or will the project end up in purgatory and be one for cinematic trivia in years to come? At this stage, things certainly don’t sound too optimistic with what sounds like repeated obstacles hindering the project’s development, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
The film was set to follow the rise of a particular religion, The Cause — bearing striking resemblance to Scientology — through the story of a charismatic intellectual leader (highly reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard) and his apprentice Freddie Sutton; roles which were filled by Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman and Renner. On top of that, Reese Witherspoon was reportedly offered the role of the Master’s wife Mary Sue while the likes of Amanda Seyfried, Emma Stone and Deborah Ann Woll were apparently considered for the role of his daughter Elizabeth.
Our review of an early, early script was certainly impressed with PTA’s writing and described the story as “the battle for Freddie’s soul which has been seduced by the dark charms of the master, but even that is far too simple a description of this layered, mysterious and at times very ambiguous tale.” That said, we did predict potential hurdles in getting this made noting that “if intelligent dramas are being threatened with extinction of late (or at least at a certain budget), surely this could become a problem for PTA.” Hopefully, our words can be proven wrong at some stage.
The Wrap have confirmed the film’s backers River Road are no longer financing the film. Looks like it’s back to square one for the film. Here’s hoping things pick up at some stage in the future.
