Joaquin Phoenix Reteams With THE MASTER Director On INHERENT VICE

Joaquin Phoenix’s phenomenal performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER, garnered him another Oscar nod and Paul and Phoenix will collaborate again.
Hollywood Reporter said Phoenix will star in Paul’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel, INHERENT VICE, which is financed by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures.
The story is about a pothead private eye named Larry “Doc” Sportello who wanders through the Summer (and winter) of Love in 1969 Los Angeles
Robert Downey Jr. previously wanted to star in this film but that’s no longer the case. Scripted by Paul Thomas Anderson, below is the book‘s official synopsis..

“Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon- private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog
It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.
In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .”