There Will Be Blood

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There Will Be Blood
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Paul Thomas Anderson
Produced by	JoAnne Sellar Paul Thomas Anderson Daniel Lupi
Screenplay by	Paul Thomas Anderson
Based on	Oil! by Upton Sinclair
Starring	Daniel Day-Lewis Paul Dano Kevin J. O'Connor Ciarán Hinds Dillon Freasier
Music by	Jonny Greenwood
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Edited by	Dylan Tichenor
Production company	Ghoulardi Film Company
Distributed by	Paramount Vantage Miramax Films
Release dates	September 27, 2007 (2007-09-27) (Fantastic Fest) December 26, 2007 (2007-12-26) (United States)
Running time	158 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English American Sign Language
Budget	$25 million
Box office	$76.2 million

There Will Be Blood is a 2007 American epic drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. The film was inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! It tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The film received significant critical praise upon release as well as numerous award nominations and victories. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Award for Best Director and a Special Artistic Contribution Award for Jonny Greenwood's score. It also appeared on many critics' "top ten" lists for the year, notably the American Film Institute, the National Society of Film Critics, the National Board of Review, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Day-Lewis won Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, NYFCC and IFTA Best Actor awards for his performance, cementing his position as one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning Best Actor for Day-Lewis and Best Cinematography for Robert Elswit.

There Will Be Blood is now widely regarded as one of the best films of the 2000s. In late 2009, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, and Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and At the Movies chose it as the best film from 2000–2009. In the directors BFI's 2012 Sight & Sound poll for the best films ever made, the film was ranked #75 (making it the third film on the list which had been released since 2000) and 202 in the critics' poll (making it the seventh film on the list released since 2000).

Plot

In 1898, Daniel Plainview, a prospector in New Mexico, mines a potentially precious ore vein from a pit mine hole. In the process of dynamiting the lode, he falls from a broken rung of the tunnel ladder and breaks his leg. He saves a silver sample, climbs out of the mine, and drags himself to the nearest assay office to evaluate his find and receives a silver and gold certificate claim. In 1902, he discovers oil near Los Angeles, California and establishes a small drilling company. Following the death of a worker in an accident, Daniel adopts the man's orphaned son. The boy, named H. W., becomes his nominal "business partner", allowing Daniel to paint himself to potential investors as "a family man".

Nine years later in 1911, Daniel is approached by Paul Sunday, who tells him of an oil deposit under his family's property in Little Boston, California. Daniel attempts to buy the farm at a bargain price but Paul's twin brother Eli, wise to Daniel's plan, holds out for $10,000 and states that it is for a local church of which he is the pastor. An agreement is made and Daniel goes on to acquire all the available land in the area, except for one holdout: William Bandy. Oil production begins, but an on-site accident kills a worker and a gas blowout robs H. W. of his hearing. Eli blames the disasters on the well not being properly blessed. When he demands his family's as yet unpaid $5,000, Daniel beats and humiliates him. Eli berates and attacks his father at the dinner table for trusting Daniel, as well as blaming his brother Paul for the family's plight.

A stranger seeking work arrives on Daniel's doorstep, claiming to be his half-brother, Henry. Daniel hires Henry to work for him, and the two grow closer. H. W. sets fire to their house, intending for it to kill Henry. Angered at his son's behavior, Daniel sends him away to a school for the deaf in San Francisco. A representative from Standard Oil offers to buy out Daniel's local interests, but Daniel elects to strike a deal with Union Oil and construct a pipeline to the California coast, though the Bandy ranch remains an impediment.

While reminiscing about their childhood, Daniel becomes suspicious of Henry and one night holds him at gunpoint. Henry confesses that he was actually a friend of the real Henry, who died from tuberculosis. In a fit of rage, Daniel murders the impostor and buries his body. The next morning, Daniel is awakened by Mr. Bandy, who knows of the previous night's events and wants Daniel to repent by joining Eli's church. Eli humiliates Daniel there, coercing him into acknowledging that he is a bad father as part of his baptism. When the ordeal is over, Daniel feels that it was worth the embarrassment. Some time later, as the pipeline is well under way, H. W. returns and reunites with Daniel, while Eli leaves town to perform missionary work.

In 1927, a much older H. W. marries Mary Sunday, his childhood sweetheart and the sister of Eli and Paul. Daniel, now extremely wealthy but a raging alcoholic, lives as a recluse in a large mansion. Through an interpreter, H. W. asks Daniel to dissolve their partnership so that he can establish his own oil company in Mexico. An offended Daniel mocks H. W.'s deafness and reveals his true origins as an orphan. H. W. leaves, but not before telling Daniel, "I thank God I have none of you in me."

Soon after, Eli pays a visit, finding a drunken Daniel passed out in the mansion's bowling alley. Eli has made a living as a radio preacher and announces that Mr. Bandy has died, then offers to broker a deal on his land. Daniel agrees, but only on the condition that Eli loudly and repeatedly admit that he is "a false prophet and that God is a superstition." Eli does so reluctantly, and Daniel reveals that the property is now worthless because he has already drained its oil through surrounding wells. Shaken and desperate, Eli confesses to be in dire financial straits, and Daniel taunts him by mentioning his brother Paul, who, Daniel claims, has his own oil company and is comparatively more successful. After Daniel briefly chases Eli in Daniel's own private bowling room, Daniel kills Eli by smashing his head in with a bowling pin. When Daniel's butler comes down to check on him, Daniel says casually, "I'm finished."

Cast

• Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview
• Paul Dano as Paul Sunday and Eli Sunday
• Kevin J. O'Connor as Henry
• Ciarán Hinds as Fletcher
• Dillon Freasier as H.W. Plainview
  • Russell Harvard as adult H.W. Plainview
• Sydney McCallister as Mary Sunday
  • Colleen Foy as adult Mary
• David Willis as Abel Sunday
• Hans Howes as William Bandy
• Paul F. Tompkins as Prescott
• Jim Downey as Al Rose
• David Warshofsky as H.M. Tilford
• Barry Del Sherman as H.B. Ailman

Production

Development

Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis in New York, December 2007.

After Eric Schlosser finished writing Fast Food Nation, reporters kept asking him about Upton Sinclair, and although he had read Sinclair's The Jungle, he did not know about his other works or anything about Sinclair himself. He decided to read most of Sinclair's works, and eventually read the novel Oil!, which he loved. Schlosser, who found the book to be exciting and thought it would make a great film, sought out the Sinclair estate and purchased the film rights. He then thought that he would try to find a director that was as passionate about the book as he was, but Paul Thomas Anderson approached him first.

Anderson had been working on a screenplay about two fighting families. He struggled with the script and soon realized it was not working. Homesick, he purchased a copy of Oil! in London, drawn to its cover illustration of a California oilfield. As he read, Anderson became even more fascinated with the novel, and after contacting Schlosser, adapted the first 150 pages to a screenplay. He began to get a real sense of where his script was going after making many trips to museums dedicated to early oilmen in Bakersfield. Anderson changed the title from Oil! to There Will Be Blood because he felt "there's not enough of the book to feel like it's a proper adaptation". He said of writing the screenplay:

I can remember the way that my desk looked, with so many different scraps of paper and books about the oil industry in the early 20th century, mixed in with pieces of other scripts that I'd written. Everything was coming from so many different sources. But the book was a great stepping-stone. It was so cohesive, the way Upton Sinclair wrote about that period, and his experiences around the oil fields and these independent oilmen. That said, the book is so long that it's only the first couple hundred pages that we ended up using, because there is a certain point where he strays really far from what the original story is. We were really unfaithful to the book. That's not to say I didn't really like the book; I loved it. But there were so many other things floating around. And at a certain point, I became aware of the stuff he was basing it on. What he was writing about was the life of [oil barons] Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. So it was like having a really good collaborator, the book.

Anderson, who had previously stated that he would like to work with Daniel Day-Lewis, wrote the screenplay with Day-Lewis in mind and approached the actor when the script was nearly complete. Anderson had heard that Daniel Day-Lewis liked his earlier film Punch-Drunk Love, which gave him the confidence to hand Day-Lewis a copy of the incomplete script. According to Day-Lewis, being asked to do the film was enough to convince him. In an interview with The New York Observer, he elaborated that what drew him to the project was "the understanding that [Anderson] had already entered into that world, [he] wasn't observing it – [he'd] entered into it – and indeed [he'd] populated it with characters who [he] felt had lives of their own".

Anderson has stated that the famous line in the final scene, "I drink your milkshake!", was paraphrased from a quote by former Secretary of the Interior and U.S. Senator from New Mexico, Albert Fall, speaking before a Congressional investigation into the 1920s oil-related Teapot Dome scandal. Anderson said he was fascinated "to see that word [milkshake] among all this official testimony and terminology" to explain the complicated process of oil drainage. In 2013, an independent attempt to locate the statement in Fall's testimony proved unsuccessful—an article published in the Case Western Reserve Law Review suggested that the actual source of the paraphrased quote may instead have been remarks in 2003 by Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico during a debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In those remarks, Domenici stated:

The oil is underground, and it is going to be drilled and come up. Here is a giant reservoir underground. Just like a curved straw, you put it underground and maneuver it, and the 'milk shake' is way over there, and your little child wants the milk shake, and they sit over here in their bedroom where they are feeling ill, and they just gobble it up from way down in the kitchen, where you don't even have to move the Mix Master that made the ice cream for them. You don't have to take it up to the bedroom. This describes the actual drilling that is taking place.

According to Joanne Sellar, one of the film's producers, it was a hard film to finance because "the studios didn't think it had the scope of a major picture". It took two years to acquire financing for the film. For the role of Plainview's "son", Anderson looked at people in Los Angeles and New York City, but he realized that they needed someone from Texas who knew how to shoot shotguns and "live in that world". The filmmakers asked around at a school and the principal recommended Dillon Freasier. They did not have him read any scenes and instead talked to him, realizing that he was the perfect person for the role.

To build his character, Day-Lewis started with the voice. Anderson sent him recordings from the late 19th century to 1927 and a copy of the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, including documentaries on its director, John Huston, an important influence on Anderson's film. According to Anderson, he was inspired by the fact that Sierra Madre is "about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself". While writing the script, he would put the film on before he went to bed at night. To research for the role, Day-Lewis read letters from laborers and studied photographs from the time period. He also read up on oil tycoon Edward Doheny, upon whom Sinclair's book is loosely based.

Filming

Principal photography began in June 2006 on a ranch in Marfa, Texas, and took three months. Other location shooting took place in Los Angeles. Anderson tried to shoot the script in sequence with most of the sets on the ranch. Two weeks in, Anderson replaced the actor playing Eli Sunday with Paul Dano, who had originally only been cast in the much smaller role of Paul Sunday, the brother who tipped off Plainview about the oil on the Sunday ranch. A profile of Day-Lewis in The New York Times Magazine suggested that the original actor, Kel O'Neill, had been intimidated by Day-Lewis's intensity and habit of staying in character on and off the set. Both Anderson and Day-Lewis deny this claim, and Day-Lewis stated, "I absolutely don't believe that it was because he was intimidated by me. I happen to believe that—and I hope I'm right."

Anderson first saw Dano in The Ballad of Jack and Rose (in which he co-starred with Day-Lewis) and thought that he would be perfect to play Paul Sunday, a role he originally envisioned to be a 12 or 13-year-old boy. Dano only had four days to prepare for the much larger role of Eli Sunday, but he researched the time period that the film is set in as well as evangelical preachers. The previous two weeks of scenes with Sunday and Plainview had to be re-shot with Dano instead of O'Neill. The interior mansion scenes were filmed at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, the former real-life home of Edward Doheny Jr., a gift from his father, Edward Doheny. Scenes filmed at Greystone involved the careful renovation of the basement's two lane bowling alley. Anderson said it was "a particular situation, because it was so narrow that there could only be a very limited amount of people at any given time, maybe five or six behind the camera and then the two boys."

Anderson dedicated the film to Robert Altman, who died while Anderson was editing it.

There Will Be Blood was shot using Panavision XL 35 mm cameras outfitted primarily with Panavision C series and high-speed anamorphic lenses.

Day-Lewis broke a rib in a fall during filming.

Music

Further information: There Will Be Blood (album)

Anderson had been a fan of Radiohead's music and was impressed with Jonny Greenwood's scoring of the film Bodysong. While writing the script for There Will Be Blood, Anderson heard Greenwood's orchestral piece "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", which prompted him to ask Greenwood to work with him. After initially agreeing to score the film, Greenwood had doubts and thought about backing out, but Anderson's reassurance and enthusiasm for the film convinced him to stick with it. Anderson gave Greenwood a copy of the film and three weeks later he came back with two hours of music recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Concerning his approach to composing the soundtrack, Greenwood said to Entertainment Weekly:

I think it was about not necessarily just making period music, which very traditionally you would do. But because they were traditional orchestral sounds, I suppose that's what we hoped was a little unsettling, even though you know all the sounds you're hearing are coming from very old technology. You can just do things with the classical orchestra that do unsettle you, that are sort of slightly wrong, that have some kind of undercurrent that's slightly sinister.

In December 2008, Greenwood's score was nominated for a Grammy in the category of "Best Score Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media" for the 51st Grammy Awards. It features classical music. Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, 3rd movement, "Vivace ma non troppo" can be heard in the ending titles and during the film Arvo Pärt's Fratres for cello and piano.

Release

Critical reception

Andrew Sarris called the film "an impressive achievement in its confident expertness in rendering the simulated realities of a bygone time and place, largely with an inspired use of regional amateur actors and extras with all the right moves and sounds." In Premiere, Glenn Kenny praised Day-Lewis's performance: "Once his Plainview takes wing, the relentless focus of the performance makes the character unique." Manohla Dargis wrote, in her review for The New York Times, "the film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic." Esquire also praised Day-Lewis' performance: "what's most fun, albeit in a frightening way, is watching this greedmeister become more and more unhinged as he locks horns with Eli Sunday … both Anderson and Day-Lewis go for broke. But it's a pleasure to be reminded, if only once every four years, that subtlety can be overrated." Richard Schickel in Time praised There Will Be Blood as "one of the most wholly original American movies ever made." Critic Tom Charity, writing about CNN's ten-best films list, calls the film the only "flat-out masterpiece" of 2007.

Schickel also named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #9, calling Daniel Day-Lewis' performance "astonishing", and calling the film "a mesmerizing meditation on the American spirit in all its maddening ambiguities: mean and noble, angry and secretive, hypocritical and more than a little insane in its aspirations."

James Christopher, chief film critic for The Times, published a list in April 2008 of his top 100 films, controversially placing There Will Be Blood in second place, behind only Casablanca.

Total Film placed it at number three in their list of the 50 best movies of Total Film's lifetime, while The Guardian ranked it 17th best arthouse film of all time.

However, some critics were less laudatory. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle challenged the film's high praise by saying "there should be no need to pretend There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece just because Anderson sincerely tried to make it one." Several months after his initial review of the film, LaSalle reiterated that while he felt it was "clear" that There Will Be Blood was not a masterpiece, he wondered if its "style, an approach, an attitude... might become important in the future." Carla Meyer, of the Sacramento Bee, gave the film three and a half out of four stars; while calling it a "masterpiece", she said that the final confrontation between Daniel and Eli marked when There Will Be Blood "stops being a masterpiece and becomes a really good movie. What was grand becomes petty, then overwrought."

Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, saying that, "There Will Be Blood is the kind of film that is easily called great. I am not sure of its greatness. It was filmed in the same area of Texas used by No Country for Old Men, and that is a great film, and a perfect one. But There Will Be Blood is not perfect, and in its imperfections (its unbending characters, its lack of women or any reflection of ordinary society, its ending, its relentlessness) we may see its reach exceeding its grasp. Which is not a dishonorable thing."

Since 2008, the film has been included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and every revised edition released afterwards.

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives a score of 91% based on reviews from 214 critics. The consensus reads, "Widely touted as a masterpiece, this sparse and sprawling epic about the underhanded 'heroes' of capitalism boasts incredible performances by leads Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, and is director Paul Thomas Anderson's best work to date." On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 92%, based on 39 reviews indicating "Universal Acclaim".

Top ten lists

The film was on the American Film Institute's 10 Movies of the Year; AFI's jury said:

There Will Be Blood is bravura film-making by one of American film's modern masters. Paul Thomas Anderson's epic poem of savagery, optimism and obsession is a true meditation on America. The film drills down into the dark heart of capitalism, where domination, not gain, is the ultimate goal. In a career defined by transcendent performances, Daniel Day-Lewis creates a character so rich and so towering, that "Daniel Plainview" will haunt the history of film for generations to come.

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.

• 1st – Ethar Alter, Giant
• 1st – Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
• 1st – Tom Charity, CNN
• 1st – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
• 1st – David Fear, Time Out New York
• 1st – Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
• 1st – Stephen Holden, The New York Times
• 1st – Tod Hill, Staten Island Advance
• 1st – Glenn Kenny, Premiere
• 1st – Craig Outhier, Orange County Register
• 1st – Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club
• 1st – Ray Pride, Salon.com
• 1st – Mike Russell, The Oregonian
• 1st – Hank Sartin, Chicago Reader
• 1st – Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle
• 1st – Mark Slutsky, Montreal Mirror
• 1st – Nick Schager, Slant Magazine
• 1st – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
• 1st – Jan Stuart, Newsday

• 1st – Ella Taylor, LA Weekly
• 2nd – David Ansen, Newsweek
• 2nd – Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club
• 2nd – Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald
• 2nd – Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club

• 3rd – A.O. Scott, The New York Times (tied with Sweeney Todd)
• 3rd – Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
• 3rd – Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
• 4th – Desson Thomson, The Washington Post
• 4th – Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
• 5th – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
• 5th – Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
• 6th – Christy Lemire, Associated Press
• 6th – Adam Kempenaar, Filmspotting
• 6th – Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
• 7th – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
• 9th – Claudia Puig, USA Today
• 9th – Richard Schickel, TIME magazine
• 10th – Lou Lumenick, New York Post
• Top 10 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Dana Stevens, Slate

"Best films of the decade" lists

Review aggregator site Metacritic, when comparing over 40 'top ten of the decade' lists from various notable publications, found There Will Be Blood to be the most mentioned, appearing on 46% of critics' lists and being ranked the decade's best film on five of them.

In December 2009, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone chose the film as the #1 film of the decade, saying:

Two years after first seeing There Will Be Blood, I am convinced that Paul Thomas Anderson's profound portrait of an American primitive—take that, Citizen Kane—deserves pride of place among the decade's finest. Daniel Day-Lewis gave the best and ballsiest performance of the past 10 years. As Daniel Plainview, a prospector who loots the land of its natural resources in silver and oil to fill his pockets and gargantuan ego, he showed us a man draining his humanity for power. And Anderson, having extended Plainview's rage from Earth to heaven in the form of a corrupt preacher (Paul Dano), managed to "drink the milkshake" of other risk-taking directors. If I had to stake the future of film in the next decade on one filmmaker, I'd go with PTA. Even more than Boogie Nights and Magnolia—his rebel cries from the 1990s—Blood let Anderson put technology at the service of character. The score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood was a sonic explosion that reinvented what film music could be. And the images captured by Robert Elswit, a genius of camera and lighting, made visual poetry out of an oil well consumed by flame. For the final word on Blood, I'll quote Plainview: "It was one goddamn hell of a show."

Chicago Tribune and At the Movies critic Michael Phillips named There Will Be Blood the decade's best film. Phillips stated:

This most eccentric and haunting of modern epics is driven by oilman Daniel Plainview, who, in the hands of actor Daniel Day-Lewis, becomes a Horatio Alger story gone horribly wrong. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's camera is as crucial to the films hypnotic pull as the performance at its center. For its evocation of the early 1900s, its relentless focus on one man's fascinating obsessions, and for its inspiring example of how to freely adapt a novel—plus, what I think is the performance of the new century—There Will Be Blood stands alone. The more I see it, the sadder, and stranger, and more visually astounding it grows—and the more it seems to say about the best and worst in the American ethos of rugged individualism. Awfully good!

Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum named There Will Be Blood the decade's best film as well. In her original review, Schwarzbaum stated:

Anyhow, a fierce story meshing big exterior-oriented themes of American character with an interior-oriented portrait of an impenetrable man (two men, really, including the false prophet Sunday) is only half Anderson's quest, and his exciting achievement. The other half lies in the innovation applied to the telling itself. For a huge picture, There Will Be Blood is exquisitely intimate, almost a collection of sketches. For a long, slow movie, it speeds. For a story set in the fabled bad-old-days past, it's got the terrors of modernity in its DNA. Leaps of romantic chordal grandeur from Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major announce the launch of a fortune-changing oil well down the road from Eli Sunday's church—and then, much later, announce a kind of end of the world. For bleakness, the movie can't be beat—nor for brilliance.

In December 2009, the website Gawker.com determined that There Will Be Blood is film critics' consensus best film of the decade when aggregating all Best of the Decade lists, stating: "And when the votes were all in, by a nose, There Will Be Blood stood alone at the top of the decade, its straw in the whole damn cinema's milkshake."

The list of critics who lauded There Will Be Blood in their assessments of films from the past decade include:

• The A. V. Club
• The Daily Telegraph
• The Guardian
• Slant Magazine
• Time Out New York
• David Denby, The New Yorker
• Scott Foundas, SF Weekly
• David Germain and Christy Lemire, The Associated Press

• Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic
• Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
• Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe
• Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
• Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
• Dana Stevens, Slate Magazine
• Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
• Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News

Box office performance

The first public screening of There Will Be Blood was on September 29, 2007, at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. The film was released on December 26, 2007, in New York and Los Angeles where it grossed US$190,739 on its opening weekend. The film then opened in 885 theaters in selected markets on January 25, 2008, grossing $4.8 million on its opening weekend. The film went on to make $40.2 million in North America and $35.9 million in the rest of the world, with a worldwide total of $76.1 million, well above its $25 million budget. But the prints and advertising cost for the film's United States release was about $40 million.

Home media

The film was released on DVD on April 8, 2008. It was released with one and two-disc editions, both are packaged in a cardboard case. Anderson has refused to record an audio commentary for the film. A HD DVD release was announced, but later canceled due to the discontinuation of the format. A Blu-ray edition was released on June 3, 2008. The film has grossed $23,604,823 through DVD sales.

Accolades

Date of ceremony	Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
February 24, 2008	Academy Awards	Best Picture		Nominated
		Best Director	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Actor	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Adapted Screenplay	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Art Direction	Jack Fisk, Jim Erickson	Nominated
		Best Cinematography	Robert Elswit	Won
		Best Film Editing	Dylan Tichenor	Nominated
		Best Sound Editing	Matthew Wood, Christopher Scarabosio	Nominated
December 16, 2007	American Film Institute	Top 10 Films
2007	Austin Film Critics Association Awards	Top 10 Films		1st place
		Best Film		Won
		Best Director	Paul Thomas Anderson	Won
		Best Actor	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Cinematography	Robert Elswit	Won
		Best Score	Jonny Greenwood	Won
January 22, 2008	Australian Film Critics Association Awards	Best Overseas Film		Won
February 10, 2008	BAFTA Awards	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Direction	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Adapted Screenplay	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Actor in a Leading Role	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Actor in a Supporting Role	Paul Dano	Nominated
		Best Film Music	Jonny Greenwood	Nominated
		Best Production Design	Jack Fisk, Jim Erickson	Nominated
		Best Cinematography	Robert Elswit	Nominated
		Best Sound	Matthew Wood	Nominated
January 10, 2009	Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics	Grand Prix		Nominated
January 7, 2008	Broadcast Film Critics Association	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Actor	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Composer	Jonny Greenwood	Won
January 26, 2008	Directors Guild of America	Outstanding Directing – Feature Film	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
January 13, 2008	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama		Nominated
January 4, 2009	International Online Film Critics' Poll	Best Film – Motion Picture		Nominated
		Top Ten Films		Won
		Best Director	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Actor	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Ensemble Cast	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Screenplay – Adapted	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Production Design	Jack Fisk, Jim Erickson	Nominated
		Best Cinematography	Robert Elswit	Nominated
January 9, 2011	International Online Film Critics' Poll	Top Ten Films – Decade		Won
		Best Actor – Decade	Daniel Day-Lewis	Nominated
December 9, 2007	Los Angeles Film Critics Association	Best Film		Won
		Best Director	Paul Thomas Anderson	Won
		Best Actor	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Screenplay	Paul Thomas Anderson	Runner-up
		Best Cinematography	Robert Elswit	Runner-up
		Best Production Design	Jack Fisk	Won
		Best Music	Jonny Greenwood	Runner-up
January 5, 2008	National Society of Film Critics	Best Film		Won
		Best Director	Paul Thomas Anderson	Won
		Best Actor	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
		Best Screenplay	Paul Thomas Anderson	Nominated
		Best Cinematography	Robert Elswit	Won
January 27, 2008	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role	Daniel Day-Lewis	Won
2007	Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Adapted Screenplay	Paul Thomas Anderson (Screenplay); Upton Sinclair (Author)	Nominated
February 2, 2008	Producers Guild of America Awards	Best Theatrical Motion Picture		Nominated
January 26, 2008	American Society of Cinematographers Awards	Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases	Robert Elswit	Won

In popular culture

The line, "I drink your milkshake!", has been used in other media repeatedly. For example:

• In season 24 of Jeopardy!, "I Drink Your Milkshake" was the title of a category about milkshakes.

• Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show and the 80th Academy Awards (for which There Will Be Blood was nominated for eight Oscars), has referenced the phrase "I drink your milkshake" several times on his show in response to news involving oil drilling, including during interviews with Ted Koppel and Nancy Pelosi.

• In February 2008, a Saturday Night Live skit featured a Food Network show called "I Drink Your Milkshake", in which Daniel Plainview (Bill Hader) and H. W. (Amy Poehler) travel from state to state looking for the perfect milkshake. They were joined later by Anton Chigurh (Fred Armisen), Javier Bardem's character from No Country for Old Men, and Juno (Tina Fey), Ellen Page's character from Juno, both nominated for Academy Awards that year.

• The South Park episode "Breast Cancer Show Ever" (October 15, 2008) parodies the final scene of the film: after Wendy beats up Cartman, Mr. Mackey approaches and says, "Wendy!" to which she replies, "I'm finished," as Cartman lies facedown in blood.

External links

• Official website
• There Will Be Blood at IMDb
• There Will Be Blood at AllMovie
• There Will Be Blood at Box Office Mojo
• There Will Be Blood at Rotten Tomatoes
• There Will Be Blood at Metacritic

Awards
Preceded by Letters from Iwo Jima	LAFCA Award for Best Film 2007	Succeeded by WALL-E
Preceded by Pan's Labyrinth	NSFC Award for Best Film 2007	Succeeded by Waltz with Bashir