A brand new trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s (There Will Be Blood) upcoming film The Master has been released, as the film gears up for a screening tonight in Chicago.

The film, which is already getting considerable Oscar buzz from its director and cast alone, is said to be inspired by Scientology, although star Philip Seymour Hoffman would disagree. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly (scans provided by Cigs and Red Vines) Hoffman said, “It’s not the L. Ron Hubbard story. [Scientology] was one of the bigger movements at the time, but there were a lot of movements at that time. There’s nothing about how I’m behaving or talking that echoes [Hubbard]. I thought of a lot of other bigger-than-life personalities, charismatic people like Orson Welles. Joaquin [Pheonix’s] character is like a beaten dog, no matter where he goes, [he] gets into severe trouble. And somehow I’m able to deal with him.”

Here’s the trailer for the film, which screens tonight in Chicago at the Music Box Theater:





A 1950s-set drama centered on the relationship between a charismatic intellectual known as “the Master” whose faith-based organization begins to catch on in America, and a young drifter who becomes his right-hand man.