New Images from Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Inherent Vice'; Film Influenced by 'Top Secret!' and 'Airplane!'

Whenever Paul Thomas Anderson releases a new film it's a pretty big deal, and his latest Inherent Vice has a lot of people anxiously awaiting its arrival. What we haven't seen is a ton of promo material on the film yet as Anderson and Warner Bros. are doing a pretty good job of keeping it under wraps, something the director didn't do so much with The Master a couple of years ago. With the film set to debut at the New York Film Festival before too long, a couple of new images have been released that will hopefully be the precursor to some kind of trailer.

The two new photos give us our first look at Reese Witherspoon, who plays Penny Kimball in the adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's offbeat crime novel. Joaquin Phoenix stars as 1970s L.A. detective Doc Sportello, who encounters a crazy group of characters while investigating the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend's rich lover. Phoenix appears in both images, including one alongside Benicio Del Toro as Doc's lawyer, Sauncho Smilax.

In an interview with The New York Times, Anderson revealed that he had to tweak a few things from Pynchon's novel, which isn't all that surprising considering its size and the huge number of characters. For one, Anderson said he came up with an entirely new ending, which is always a precarious thing when dealing with adaptations such as this. And as far as how it will play tonally, Anderson says Top Secret! and Airplane! were inspirations, which might not make everyone happy but it has me skipping around gleefully like a schoolgirl.

Inherent Vice opens in limited release on December 12th before going wide January 9th 2015.