Paul Thomas Anderson is back with Leonardo DiCaprio and a pregnant shooter in a series of clashes.

      The latest teaser for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another opens with a striking visual and sounds: a long-haired Leonardo DiCaprio, sipping on a beer, is startled by a pregnant woman who is firing an automatic weapon repeatedly.

      Soon after, her child is born, leading to the question, “What are you gonna do about this baby?” from someone nearby.

      We then see another woman — presumably the grown-up baby? — wielding a similar firearm. This character is portrayed by Chase Infiniti, and it isn’t long before she finds herself in the grip of the film’s antagonist, played by Sean Penn. Accompanying this action is the characteristically jarring music from Anderson's frequent collaborator, Jonny Greenwood.

      The rest is left for you to interpret. But don’t fret — this is merely the teaser for One Battle After Another, essentially a preview for a trailer. The official trailer will be released next week.

      Background on One Battle After Another, Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

      One Battle After Another marks the first collaboration between Anderson and DiCaprio, while also reuniting him with Penn, who had a memorable role in Anderson’s last film, 2021’s Licorice Pizza.

      Alongside DiCaprio, Penn, and Infiniti, the film features Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, as well as Benicio Del Toro, who previously worked with Anderson on 2014’s Inherent Vice, and Licorice Pizza star Alana Haim. Filming took place in locations such as Sacramento, California, and El Paso, Texas.

      One Battle After Another is set to hit theaters on September 26.

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      This is the second film by Anderson based on a Thomas Pynchon novel. The reclusive author also penned the 2009 novel that inspired Inherent Vice, which featured Joaquin Phoenix as a stoner detective.

      One Battle After Another draws inspiration from Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, which is set in 1984 and tells the story of 1960s rebels pursued by an unyielding federal prosecutor.

      The new film appears to take significant creative liberties with the source material, as it is set in the present day rather than the 1980s.

      In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Warner Bros. film has a budget of $140 million, with DiCaprio receiving a $20 million paycheck.

      This amount has garnered attention, considering that Anderson’s highest-grossing film to date, There Will Be Blood, earned $76 million at the box office.

      However, the increased budget for One Battle After Another is rationalized by DiCaprio’s star power — he remains one of the few truly bankable actors in Hollywood — as well as the prestige linked to directing an Anderson film.

      The reasoning follows that you cannot assign a monetary value to releasing a new work from the director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and Phantom Thread.

      Main image: One Battle After Another, by Paul Thomas Anderson. Warner Bros.