There Will Be Blood writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson will next helm a Universal Pictures period drama to star Philip Seymour Hoffman as a founder of a new religious organization in the 1950s, says Variety.
Hoffman would play “the Master,” as in “master of ceremonies,” a charismatic intellectual who hatches a faith-based organization that begins to catch on in America in 1952. The core is the relationship between the Master and Freddie, a twentysomething drifter who becomes the leader’s lieutenant. As the faith begins to gain a fervent following, Freddie finds himself questioning the belief system he has embraced, and his mentor.
Hoffman made his breakthrough in the cast of Anderson’s Boogie Nights and has also appeared in the Anderson-directed Hard Eight, Punch-Drunk Love and Magnolia.
