After making a divisive but remarkable inkblot of a movie with The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson hopes to get started on his next film in 2013: an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. It's one of Pynchon's lighter novels -- his California books tend to be breezier than V, Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day, and Mason & Dixon -- but it'll be the first adaptation of the author's work to hit the big screen.

As for adapting the text, Anderson says his screenplay will stick close to the source material rather than being a loose interpretation. As Dennis Lim reported in The New York Times:

While There Will Be Blood was inspired by Upton Sinclair's Oil!, [Inherent Vice] will be a more faithful adaptation -- and a new kind of screenwriting challenge -- for Mr. Anderson. "It's more secretarial," he said. "The credit should be like 'secretary to the author.'" He added that he has "a large stack of pages" and hopes to shoot next year. "But it's no less fun. In some ways it's just what the doctor ordered right now for me: being more selfless."

Still no confirmation on Robert Downey, Jr. playing the lead role, or if Anderson has been hanging out with Pynchon and the two are now BFFs. Look for more info on Inherent Vice in the coming months.

[The New York Times via Collider]