Last year, when novelist and Simpsons voice artist Thomas Pynchon released his family-friendly stoner detective novel, Inherent Vice, CAA instantly began shopping the novel around for its film adaptation. It wasn’t long before Vulture’s Claude Brodesser-Ackner broke the news that none other than Paul Thomas Anderson himself would be writing the adaptation. Then smack-dab in the middle of February’s Oscar build up, Deadline reported that Robert Downey Jr. was anxiously circling the project to star as the book’s snooping stoner protagonist, Larry “Doc” Sportello. As The Playlist writes this morning, “The 384-page novella is a bit more straightforward than usual Pynchon fare, and follows a private detective uncovering a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer in drug-kissed 1960s Los Angeles. Many reviewers have even drawn comparisons to the psychedelic noir of ‘The Big Lebowski’.” The Playlist also revealed in their post this morning that Anderson let it slip last week at the Venice Film Festival that he’s excited to not only jump into the project immediately, but also to embark on an (unusually) productive phase in his career. You can get all the exciting details about what many insiders consider to be the hottest project in Hollywood by visiting The Playlist. You can pick up your own copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice at Amazon.
