There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is a 2007 American epic period drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, loosely based on the 1927 novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds, and Dillon Freasier. The film follows silver miner-turned-oilman Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) as he embarks on a ruthless quest for wealth during the Californian oil boom between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Development on There Will Be Blood began after writer Eric Schlosser purchased the film rights to Sinclair's novel in 2004: it was acquired by Ghoulardi Film Company, Paramount Vantage and Miramax Films after Anderson completed the first draft of the film's screenplay. Day-Lewis immediately joined the project while Dano, who initially signed on for a smaller role, took on a starring role after replacing Kel O'Neill during filming. Principal photography began in June 2006 and lasted until that September, with filming locations including Los Angeles and Marfa, Texas. The film's music was composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

There Will Be Blood premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin on September 29, 2007: it was first theatrically released in New York City and Los Angeles on December 26 and in selected international markets on January 25, 2008. It grossed $76.1 million worldwide and received acclaim from critics, with praise for the cinematography, Anderson's direction, screenplay, music, and performances of Day-Lewis and Dano. The National Board of Review, the American Film Institute and the National Society of Film Critics named There Will Be Blood one of the top-ten films of 2007. The film was nominated for eight awards at the 80th Academy Awards, winning two (Best Actor for Day-Lewis and Best Cinematography) and received numerous other accolades. It has since been widely regarded as one of the greatest films of the 21st century.

In 1898, Daniel Plainview finds silver while prospecting in New Mexico but breaks his leg. Dragging himself from the pit, he takes a sample to an assay office and receives a silver and gold claim. In 1902, he discovers oil in California. Following the death of a worker in an accident, Daniel adopts the man's orphaned son, H.W. The boy becomes his partner, allowing Daniel to present himself as a family man.

In 1911, Daniel is approached by Paul Sunday, a young man who tells him of an oil deposit in Little Boston. Daniel visits the Sundays' property in Little Boston and meets Paul's identical twin brother Eli, a preacher. Daniel attempts to purchase the farm from the Sundays at a bargain price under the ruse of using it to hunt quail, but his motives are questioned by Eli, who knows the land has oil. In exchange for the property, Eli demands $10,000 for his church. An agreement is made and Daniel acquires all the available land in and around the Sunday property, save for the land owned by one holdout, William Bandy.

After Daniel reneges on an agreement to let Eli bless the well before drilling begins, a series of misfortunes occur: an accident kills one worker and a gas blowout deafens H.W. and destroys the drilling infrastructure. When Eli publicly demands the money still owed to him, Daniel beats him. At the dinner table that night, Eli attacks and berates his father for having trusted Daniel. A man arrives at Daniel's doorstep claiming to be his half-brother, Henry. Later that night H.W. sets fire to their house, intending to kill Henry. Daniel sends H.W. to a school for the deaf in San Francisco. Standard Oil offers to buy out Daniel's local interests, but Daniel refuses and instead strikes a deal with Union Oil to build a pipeline. However, Bandy's ranch remains an impediment.

Daniel becomes suspicious of Henry after he fails to recognize a joke and confronts him one night at gunpoint. "Henry" confesses that he was a friend of the real Henry, who died of tuberculosis, and that he had impersonated Henry in the hope that Daniel could give him a job. An enraged Daniel murders him and buries his body. Daniel drinks and weeps. The next morning, Daniel is awakened by Bandy, who knows of Daniel's crime and wants him to publicly repent in Eli's church in exchange for an easement to run his pipeline across the ranch. As part of his baptism, Eli humiliates Daniel and coerces him into confessing that he abandoned his child. Later, while the pipeline is being built, H.W. reunites with Daniel and Eli becomes a missionary.

In 1927, H.W. marries Paul and Eli's sister Mary. Daniel, now extremely wealthy but an alcoholic, lives alone in a large mansion. H.W. asks his father to dissolve their partnership so that he can move to Mexico with Mary and start his own drilling company. Daniel angrily mocks H.W.'s deafness before revealing his true origins and disowning him as his son. H.W. finally leaves after thanking God he is not related to Daniel. Later that evening, Eli, now a radio preacher, visits a drunken Daniel in the bowling alley set up in his basement. With Little Boston suffering in the Great Depression, Eli asks Daniel to partner with the church in drilling Bandy's property. Daniel agrees on the condition that Eli denounce his faith. Once Eli acquiesces, Daniel reveals that he already drained the property of its oil supply by capture and taunts Eli for his misfortune. He chases Eli around the alley and bludgeons him to death with a bowling pin. When his butler appears to ask about the commotion, Daniel announces, "I'm finished."

Critics see the film as a commentary on the nature of capitalism and greed, and its inherent national presence in America. David Denby of The New Yorker described the film as being about "the driving force of capitalism as it both creates and destroys the future" and goes on to say that "this movie is about the vanishing American frontier. The thrown-together buildings look scraggly and unkempt, the homesteaders are modest, stubborn, and reticent, but, in their undreamed-of future, Wal-Mart is on the way." Daniel Plainview's "I have a competition in me" speech has been looked upon as important when analyzing the film from this angle.

Others have noted themes of faith, religion, and family. James Christopher of The Times viewed the film as "a biblical parable about America's failure to square religion and greed."

After Eric Schlosser finished writing Fast Food Nation, many reporters noted similarities to Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. Although Schlosser had not read the book and was unfamiliar with Sinclair's other works, comparisons between the two books prompted Schlosser to read Sinclair's works, including the novel Oil!. Schlosser, who found the book to be exciting and thought it would make an excellent film, sought out the Sinclair estate and purchased the film rights. Schlosser intended to find a director who was as passionate about the book as he was but director Paul Thomas Anderson approached him first.

Anderson had an existing screenplay about two fighting families. He struggled with the script and soon realized it was not working. Homesick while away in London, Anderson purchased a copy of Oil!, drawn to its cover illustration of a California oilfield. Inspired by the novel, Anderson contacted Schlosser and adapted the first 150 pages to a screenplay. Research trips to museums dedicated to early oilmen in Bakersfield assisted Anderson in the development of the screenplay. Anderson changed the title from Oil! to There Will Be Blood because he felt "there's not enough of the book to feel like it's a proper adaptation".

He said of writing the screenplay:

Anderson, who had said that he would like to work with Daniel Day-Lewis, wrote the screenplay with Day-Lewis in mind and approached Day-Lewis when the script was nearly complete. Anderson had heard that Day-Lewis liked his earlier film Punch-Drunk Love, which gave him the confidence to hand Day-Lewis a copy of the incomplete script. According to Day-Lewis, being asked to do the film was enough to convince him. In an interview with The New York Observer, he elaborated that what drew him to the project was "the understanding that [Anderson] had already entered into that world, [he] wasn't observing it – [he'd] entered into it – and indeed [he'd] populated it with characters who [he] felt had lives of their own".

Anderson said that the line in the final scene, "I drink your milkshake!", was paraphrased from a quote by former Secretary of the Interior and U.S. Senator from New Mexico, Albert Fall speaking before a Congressional investigation into the 1920s oil-related Teapot Dome scandal. Anderson said he was fascinated "to see that word [milkshake] among all this official testimony and terminology" to explain the complicated process of oil drainage. In 2014, an independent attempt to locate the statement in Fall's testimony proved unsuccessful—an article published in the Case Western Reserve Law Review suggested that the actual source of the paraphrased quote may instead have been remarks in 2003 by Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico during a debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In those remarks, Domenici stated:

According to Joanne Sellar, one of the film's producers, the film was difficult to finance because "the studios didn't think it had the scope of a major picture". It took two years to acquire financing for the film. For the role of Plainview's "son", Anderson looked at people in Los Angeles and New York City, but he realized that they needed someone from Texas who knew how to shoot shotguns and "live in that world". The filmmakers asked around at a school and the principal recommended Dillon Freasier. They did not have him read any scenes and instead talked to him, realizing that he was the perfect person for the role.

To build his character, Day-Lewis started with the voice. Anderson sent him recordings from the late 19th century to 1927 and a copy of the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, including documentaries on its director, John Huston, an important influence on Anderson's film. According to Anderson, he was inspired by the fact that Sierra Madre is "about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself." While writing the script, he would put the film on before he went to bed at night. To research for the role, Day-Lewis read letters from laborers and studied photographs from the time period. He also read up on oil tycoon Edward Doheny, upon whom Sinclair's book is loosely based.