Jo Blo is pointing to some loose talk on Cigarettes and Red Vines, Paul Thomas Anderson’s blog, as an indication of what might be Anderson’s next film. “Anderson may be taking on Power Play,” he reports, “about the ongoing battles between Las Vegas casinos and Native American tribes. Jack Nicholson was at one time attached to the script but it’s unclear if he’d be involved in PTA’s version.”
The Power Play script “was written by Peter Bart, the editor-in-chief of Variety,” he explains. “Bart was suspended for three months because the sale of the script violated Variety policy (Bart later reformatted the script as a novella to get around this issue). That in and of itself is an interesting story but off point. We probably won’t hear much word on Anderson’s next project for a little while longer but the thought of Anderson working with Nicholson is pretty exciting.”
The actual Cigarettes and Red Vines item, posted last Saturday (6.7) by a guy named “C.J. Wallis,” reads as follows: “We√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ve gotten a bunch of various projects and things sent to us that Paul is (or is not) √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚Äúseconds away from shooting,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù etc., etc. The latest one is a film called Power Pl;ay, apparently set to star Jack Nicholson about a gambling entrepreneur from a Native American casino who decides to take on Las Vegas.
“The film is through Paramount Pictures and Robert Evans, based on the Peter Bart novel. No official word obviously from The Family, but I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ll see what comes from asking.”