Just months after releasing his last film, The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson is set to get behind the camera once again. His next film Inherent Vice, based on the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same title, will reportedly start filming this month having recently received financing from Warner Bros. Joaquin Phoenix will star in a role once earmarked for Robert Downey Jr., as a pot-smoking detective in 1960s Los Angeles who finds himself wrapped up in a labyrinthine crime plot. Anderson’s regular DP, Robert Elswit is also back on board, after taking a hiatus for The Master. Read more below.

The PTA-centric website Cigarettes and Red Vines first reported this news. It’s confirmation of producer JoAnne Sellar’s quotes from early this year that they hoped to start filming around this time.

As one would expect from a Los Angeles crime story, Vice will be filled with all kinds of seedy roles. While Phoenix is the only cast member that’s been announced, word is Anderson has been spending his days meeting with actors to populate the rest of the film. Those names will likely begin to hit the public in the coming weeks.

Anderson took five years each to make his last two films, so having just released a masterpiece in 2012, it’s almost unthinkable that we’re going to get a new Anderson movie so soon. But, obviously, we couldn’t be more enthusiastic. Here’s the jacket description of Pynchon’s novel: