BlackTree TV covers The 80th Annual Academy Awards

Best Picture

There Will Be Blood

A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times 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.

Atonement

Juno

Michael Clayton

No Country for Old Men

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.

Cast

Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis heads a cast that includes Paul Dano (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), Ciarán Hinds (ROME, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING), Kevin J. O’Connor (VAN HELSING, THE MUMMY) and newcomer Dillon Freasier.

Production Team

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.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 (GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK); production design by Jack Fisk (THE NEW WORLD, MULHOLLAND 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 (THE ASSASSINATION 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.