When a movie is expected to dominate the Oscars in January, it can go one of two ways: It can keep the bright light shone upon it and have a very big night (Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All At Once) or can be weighed down under all of the expectations and sink to the bottom (The Power Of The Dog, 1917). Heavy is the head that is expected to wear the crown, and this year, that head is firmly on the shoulders of Paul Thomas Anderson, the 55-year old bespectacled weirdo whose film, One Battle After Another, is expected to have a very big March. The film, telling the story of Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to get him and his daughter to safety, has all of the PTA benchmarks: a star-studded cast, a razor-tight script, a Jonny Greenwood score, and a lot of hype. One Battle will be Anderson’s fourth film making a run at Oscars’ biggest prize and he will almost be certainly be nominated for Best Director for the fourth time.
But something about this film and this nomination feels bigger. Because One Battle may have to win Best Picture in order to be considered a success. And, if you are a fan of movies, you need the film to succeed.
When One Battle After Another began production in 2024, it was reported to have a $100 million budget. Now, for a Warner Brothers movie, this shouldn’t seem to be a lot. But keep this in mind: At that time, this budget would be over twice what any Anderson film grossed at the box office. But Warner Brothers, which had a very good 2025 with Sinners, The Minecraft Movie, F1 and Weapons has always been a studio who loved supporting talented directors. With DiCaprio onboard, $100 million probably seemed like a steal.
Unfortunately, the film’s budget expanded, in large part due to Anderson’s insistence to shoot in California. The final cost of the film was somewhere around $175 million which is not including the massive press tour that Warner launched to promote the film. It was expected that the film would have to gross a quarter-billion dollars to make a profit. And while the film did well, winning the initial box office weekend for the first time in Anderson’s career, it was about $50,000 shy of the profit line.
In case you have been living under a tree, theatrical movie-going has been under fire in a post-COVID world, and the fact that Netflix is about to buy Warner Brothers has many feeling even more dour about the possibility of seeing a movie on a really big screen, or at least one bigger than your fucking cell phone. If that is going to happen, it’s going to take more than superhero movies or things based on video games and other IP. It’s going to take movies like some of the films I mentioned earlier. And it’s going to take directors like Anderson.
Winning a Best Picture Oscar is still a big deal. It’s the one currency which still establishes trust in the movie business. Capturing his first could show Hollywood to give Anderson another big budget instead of trying to force him to nickel-and-dime his way through his next production. This Oscar race is important for PTA… and all of Hollywood.
Fancy Boys Club 