Daniel Day-Lewis Finds His Muse in First Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread
Image via Focus Features/YouTubePaul Thomas Anderson’s next film is on its way, and as of today, we have an official title and a trailer for the forthcoming drama, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a 1950s fashionista.
The film’s official synopsis is as follows:
Set in the glamour of 1950’s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock’s life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love. With his latest film, Paul Thomas Anderson paints an illuminating portrait both of an artist on a creative journey, and the women who keep his world running.
Phantom Thread is Anderson’s first film since 2014’s divisive Thomas Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice, and his first collaboration with Day-Lewis since 2007’s tremendous There Will Be Blood. Perhaps most noteworthy of all, the drama will be Day-Lewis’ last performance—the three-time Oscar winner announced in June that he would “no longer be working as an actor.”
The Phantom Thread info drip has been painfully slow, but steady. The film was picked up by Focus Features for $35 million last fall, began shooting in the U.K. last winter and received an awards-friendly release date in spring. A February press release described the then-untitled film as “a drama set in the couture world of 1950s London” that “illuminates the life behind the curtain of an uncompromising dressmaker commissioned by royalty and high society.”
Starring alongside Day-Lewis are Lesley Manville (Maleficent), Vicky Krieps (Hanna) and Richard Graham (Vera Drake). Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood scored Phantom Thread, his fourth collaboration with Anderson after Inherent Vice, The Master and There Will Be Blood.
Phantom Thread opens on Dec. 25. Watch the film’s first trailer above.