Photographer Sicco Rood with the Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center captured the moment on camera, giving a sneak peak into DiCaprio’s current production. The acting played out right behind the reserve.


Actor Leonardo DiCaprio seen filming in the Borrego Springs area.© Provided by KSWB-TV San Diego


Actor Leonardo DiCaprio seen filming in the Borrego Springs area.© Provided by KSWB-TV San Diego


Actor Leonardo DiCaprio seen filming in the Borrego Springs area.© Provided by KSWB-TV San Diego


Actor Leonardo DiCaprio seen filming in the Borrego Springs area.© Provided by KSWB-TV San Diego

In one photo, DiCaprio could be seen alongside his stunt double wearing matching attire and sporting a “man bun.” Another actor, who’s identity wasn’t confirmed, could be seen with a firearm across his shoulder.


Actor Leonardo DiCaprio seen filming in the Borrego Springs area.© Provided by KSWB-TV San Diego

As reported by FOX 5/ KUSI’s Sacramento-based sister station, the movie in the making is expected to debut in IMAX theaters in August 2025 per film industry and review site IndieWire. Though little has been released about the storyline, the Paul Thomas Anderson creation has been described by Warner Bros. as an “event film.”

Though untitled to date, the film is referred to as the “BC Project.”

Based on the filming done so far, Rood suspects the movie is an “modern adaptation of the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland.” According to Goodreads, the book is about “a group of Americans in Northern California in 1984 that are struggling with the consequences of their lives in the 60s.”

One of the main characters, Zoyd Wheeler, is “preparing for his annual act of televised insanity for which he receives a government stipend,” as explained by Goodreads. His nemesis and other main character Brock Vond, who Rood suspect’s in played by DiCaprio, “storms into Vineland at the head of a heavily armed strike force.”

In essence, “Vineland is a strange evocation of a twentieth-century America headed for a less than harmonic future.”

Other actors reported to be in the film include Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris and Alana Haim. Other shooting locations include the Sacramento area, as well as Eureka, Galt and Stockton.