One Battle After Another Director Paul Thomas Anderson Secretly Rewrote Two Major Movies

"One Battle After Another" is Paul Thomas Anderson's 10th film as a writer/director. Most of his movies have been widely celebrated by critics, and many of them have been Oscar darlings; Anderson's films have received, to date, 28 Oscar nominations and three wins. Of those 28 nominations, nine of them have been for his actors. The director's frank style, expansive ideas, and love of physical celluloid have marked him as one of the most significant filmmakers of his generation.

Anderson is one of those rare filmmakers who only directs his own scripts; he has never taken any gigs as a director-for-hire and has only ever penned his own shorts and video projects. Curiously, he even has an episode writing credit for "Saturday Night Live," the only script of his he didn't direct. Well, as far as we know.

Speaking with Dazed, Anderson revealed his writing credits are more varied than we thought. It seems the filmmaker — as is common in Hollywood — has occasionally done punch-ups and re-writes for other major Hollywood productions. Although most movies usually only have a handful of credited writers at most, many films, especially gigantic blockbusters, nevertheless employ teams of scribes throughout their development. These punch-up writers aren't typically credited (due to WGA rules, contracts, and other stipulations), but some of your favorite screenwriters probably have much longer resumes than their IMDb pages suggest.

Notably, Anderson told Dazed that he did script work on Ridley Scott's biopic "Napoleon" and Martin Scorsese's excellent drama "Killers of the Flower Moon," both of which released in 2023. The former's script is credited to David Scarpa, while the latter's is credited to Scorsese and Eric Roth. As for his own contributions, Anderson admitted, "I love to contribute in any way I can if somebody reaches out for help."

There had been rumors circulating for a while that Anderson had secretly contributed to the scripts for "Napoleon" and "Killers of the Flower Moon," but now it's official. It seems that Scott and Martin both reached out to him, asking for a little aid in defining their scripts. Anderson was keen to do so, as he has now worked with both films' leads. Joaquin Phoenix played Napoleon, but he also starred in Anderson's films "The Master" and "Inherent Vice." Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio played the callow, greedy Ernest in "Killers of the Flower Moon" and is now starring in "One Battle After Another.  

"Both of those things were a thing with Joaquin, a thing with Leo, and obviously with Marty and Ridley," Anderson continued. "It's always a privilege to say, 'Let me tell you my thoughts on the script.'"

His contributions weren't all that modest, though, at least not on "Napoleon." As reported by IndieWire back in 2024, Anderson was brought in to rewrite that film specifically because Phoenix hated the script and would only remain on the production if Anderson was specifically hired to "fix" it. It seems that Anderson's ideas gave Scott and Phoenix a hearty chuckle, and the movie was re-written to Phoenix's liking. 

As for "Killers of the Flower Moon," there hasn't been any additional reporting as to how extensive Anderson's contributions were. We'll have to take his word for it that he merely offered his thoughts on the script.

"One Battle After Another" is currently playing in theaters.