Could Paul Thomas Anderson's Next Movie Be A Western About Outlaw Bob Dalton?

Is PTA making a western for his next film? We saw shots of Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of Adam Sandler's new super-group comedy, "Grown Ups" and were like, "wtf?," until we realized he was just visiting with the wife life-partner and kids (Maya Rudolph has a role).

Fine. but we got to thinking, whats PTA up to? IMDB is not really a place to start for new project scoops, but we figured we'd start there and lo and behold under in-development, there's a project called, "Desparadoes," and it's undeniably a western. Synopsis:

"The story of Bob Dalton, the gang of professional outlaws he put together in the late 1800s, and Eugenia Moore, the woman who fell in love with Bob and helped the Dalton Gang rob trains."

According to IMDB pro, PTA is only listed as the exec-producer and apparently rights for the project are in dispute, as "The Thin Red Line" producers Geisler-Roberdeau believe they owns them. Ron Hansen, who wrote the novel of which the excellent anti-Western, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," starring Brad Pitt was based on, also wrote the original 1979 "Desperadoes" book too which vaguely bodes well. Charles Eastman, whose last screen credit appears to be Hal Ashby's 1981 film "Second-Hand Hearts" wrote the script.

Cigarettes & Vine, the comprehensive PTA sites seems to have nothing on this development so far. However, a little digging shows that this was simply once a project for '70s cult filmmaker Monte Hellman ("Two Lane Blacktop," "Cockfighter") and PTA (and Scorsese) were simply exec-producers, but this was back in 2006. The same writer (Eastman) was attached so obviously this is the exact same project.

Mystery solved, right? Well, our only ray of hope that this is a PTA project (no offense to Hellman), is that it's listed in development on PTA's IMDB page, Eastman's page, but not anywhere on Hellman's page; and there's the fact that it seemed to pop up on IMDB only within the last 3-4 days. Perhaps there's some new development either way? Let's face it, it's probably not a PTA directorial project, but hey, if it's just being thrown back into the mix now, perhaps that means something new, which can lead to some very wishful thinking?