Film: Academy Awards: "There Will Be Blood"

“THERE WILL BE BLOOD” movie

The Story About the Movie

Film Synopsis

Release Date: December 26, 2007

Cast: Paul Dano (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), Ciaràn Hinds (ROME, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING), Kevin J. O’Connor (VAN HELSING, THE MUMMY) and newcomer Dillon Freasier

A sprawling epic about family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the radical frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom.

The story chronicles the rise of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon.

When Plainview gets a mysterious tip that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston.

In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value – love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son – is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD is the fifth film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, MAGNOLIA, BOOGIE NIGHTS, HARD EIGHT). Anderson’s screenplay is loosely based upon the classic, 1920s muck-raking novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis heads a cast that includes Paul Dano (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), Ciaràn Hinds (ROME, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING), Kevin J. O’Connor (VAN HELSING, THE MUMMY) and newcomer Dillon Freasier.

Anderson and his frequent collaborators JoAnne Sellar and Daniel Lupi produced THERE WILL BE BLOOD. The executive producers are Scott Rudin, Eric Schlosser and David Williams.

The film features cinematography by long-time Anderson associate and Academy Award®-nominee Robert Elswit, ASC (GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK); production design by Jack Fisk (THE NEW WORLD, MULLHOLAND DRIVE, THE THIN RED LINE); costume design by Mark Bridges (MAGNOLIA, BOOGIE NIGHTS) who has worked four times previously with Anderson; editing by Dylan Tichenor, A.C.E. (THE ASSASINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS) who also edited MAGNOLIA and BOOGIE NIGHTS; and a resonant score from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

“There’s an ocean of oil beneath of our feet. No one can get at it except for me.” -- Daniel Plainview

THERE WILL BE BLOOD joins a pantheon of American motion pictures that explore the powerful confluence of ambition, wealth, family and the magnetic lure of the West. Paul Thomas Anderson’s fifth film plunges the audience into an astonishingly raw and real turn-of-the-century California and revolves around one unforgettable character:

Daniel Plainview, a rough-and-tumble prospector who transforms himself and an entire town through oil. As he ascends from a rugged miner to an imperious tycoon, in the mold of such historical oil pioneers as Edward Doheny and John Rockefeller, Plainview will bring progress and riches to a land that has never known them, at a cost that will blacken his very soul.

As portrayed by Academy Award®-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Plainview is a man whose charm, aspirations and uncompromising obsession with remaining self-made will stir up a maelstrom in the Central California town of Little Boston. As oil gushes up from the ground, Plainview will bring changes of operatic sweep to this insular world – pitting belief, hope, love and hard work against cynicism, greed, seduction and monstrous corruption.

Shot in Marfa, Texas where the legendary oil-themed GIANT was filmed decades ago, Anderson and a devoted cast and crew have crafted a symphonic tapestry of images that appear to come to vivid, visceral life right out of a sepia-toned photograph -- yet are completely original and intimately specific to Daniel Plainview’s meteoric rise and bloodcurdling descent.

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