Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson ("Magnolia", "Punch-Drunk Love") is in advanced talks to produce and direct "There Will Be Blood," a period drama loosely based on the 1927 Upton Sinclair novel "Oil!," for Paramount Classics and Miramax Films. Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Producer Scott Rudin will team this spring on the pic reports Ananova.

Anderson wrote the sprawling period piece script and used as his basis Sinclair's expose of the seamy side of the drilling business in Southern California when it became the equivalent of the gold rush.

Day-Lewis will play a prospector who buys the oil rights to a family's ranch, and then hits a major pocket of crude. The story then turns into a tale of greed and faith, as the prospector realizes the American dream and is destroyed by it.

Shooting will begin mid-May, in Texas and New Mexico with a budget just over $25 million.