Leonardo DiCaprio’s next project is playing… Bob Ferguson?
Mar 29, 2025, 6:26 AM
Left: Leonardo DiCaprio in Paul Thomas Anderson's 'One Battle After Another.' Right: Headshot of WA Gov. Bob Ferguson. (Photos courtesy of promotional images via Warner Bros., WA Office of the Governor)
(Photos courtesy of promotional images via Warner Bros., WA Office of the Governor)
Leonardo DiCaprio’s next massive acting project was announced this week when Warner Bros. released a trailer for the upcoming film “One Battle After Another,” where he will play the lead role of…Bob Ferguson?
“This is Bob Ferguson,” Leonardo DiCaprio is heard saying in the opening seconds of the trailer. “I was a part of the French 75.”
From Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson, #OneBattleAfterAnother.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti. Only in theaters September 26. pic.twitter.com/nH4nIzzjUV
— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 27, 2025
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Clearly, this isn’t a biopic on Washington’s Attorney General-turned-Governor Bob Ferguson. But it’s a strange pivot from the film’s source material, Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” where the protagonist is named Zoyd Wheeler alongside Frenesi Gates, her daughter Prairie, and Brock Vond.
How close is ‘One Battle After’ to the source material?
“Vineland” follows climate activists and ex-hippies struggling against the backdrop of escalating Reagan-era authoritarianism in Northern California—to keep the premise vague. In the trailer for “One Battle After Another,” it appears as if DiCaprio is playing a jittery, disheveled revolutionary-in-training of sorts.
Is this revealing an alter ego for Gov. Ferguson? A secret pastime? A dream job he was never able to capitalize on, settling instead to lead one of the most liberal states in the country? It can’t simply be a coincidence, right?
“One Battle After Another” is Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth feature film that he’s directed, and the first in four years. Warner Bros. is ponying up a hefty $115-130 million budget for this project, by far the biggest budget Anderson has worked with in his career.
The film, set to be released Sept. 26, is expected to be a major awards player. Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “There Will Be Blood”) is an 11-time Oscar nominee, including three nominations for Best Director and five nominations for writing, across six films, while Leonardo DiCaprio is a seven-time nominee and one-time winner, winning Best Actor for “The Revenant” in 2016.
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