Leonardo DiCaprio details the reason why his new movie One Battle After Another paused production, and it’s a very good one.

DiCaprio ticks another name off his wish-list of acclaimed collaborators by starring in the newest film from Oscar-nominee Paul Thomas Anderson. The Revenant star’s cast-mates this time include Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor.

11 years after filming the author’s Inherent Vice, One Battle After Another sees PTA again drawing upon the twisted world of Thomas Pynchon, loosely adapting the writer’s 1990 post-modernist novel Vineland.

The action-thriller film stars DiCaprio as an ex-revolutionary whose daughter is kidnapped by a long-ago adversary, leading him to call for help from his former accomplices. One of these old compatriots, Sergio St. Carlos, is played by del Toro, whose casting was so important to DiCaprio and Anderson that they made an unusual concession in order to get him.

Speaking to ScreenRant ahead of the release of One Battle After Another, DiCaprio detailed how his and Anderson’s plans were altered by the desire to cast del Toro, even leading to a brief production pause:

Benicio came in… we waited around for Benicio. He was shooting another movie, and we stopped production. We said, “We’ve got to have The Bull play Sensei Carlos; that’s it.”

DiCaprio then detailed how Del Toro’s arrival led to Anderson exploring “different avenues” than originally intended:

And Paul is a writer-director, so sometimes they’re very beholden to their specific words. But [Benicio] came fully-formed as Sensei Carlos, and that led to all these different avenues that the structure of the story took–with the sort of Latino Harriet Tubman sub-story, me escaping through connections that he has at the corrections facility, the nurses.

DiCaprio finished by crediting Anderson for his flexibility in allowing actors to bring their own ideas:

All that could only happen in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie because if you come with conviction about who this character is and what they would do, he’s not afraid to throw out some of his ideas and go for something better.

What This Means For One Battle After Another

DiCaprio’s well-reviewed One Battle After Another collaboration with Anderson not only fulfills the wishes of many movie fans, it also represents a big do-over for the star, who talked recently about his regret over pᴀssing on a previous chance to work with the director (via Esquire):

My biggest regret is not doing Boogie Nights. It was a profound movie of my generation. I can’t imagine anyone but Mark [Wahlberg] in it. When I finally got to see that movie, I just thought it was a masterpiece.

DiCaprio’s admiration for Anderson comes through not only in those remarks, but in his new ScreenRant interview, where he praises the writer-director for being willing to change up his script when an actor has his own ideas about his character.

That Anderson was willing to pause production while waiting for del Toro also speaks to the filmmaker’s adaptability, a trait that is not always present in big-name directors. Of course, Anderson previously worked with del Toro on Inherent Vice, so he was well aware of the star’s qualifications.

One Battle After Another appears to be a significantly different movie with del Toro than it would have been without him, and DiCaprio seems convinced it’s a better movie. But is it good enough to finally win Anderson his first Oscar after going 0-11?

Our Take On One Battle After Another Waiting For Del Toro

It’s important for movies to remain on-schedule, especially movies that reportedly have budgets in the range of $130-175 million. But it’s also vital for movies to cast the right actors, and sometimes that means accommodating other people’s schedules, regardless of the cost.

DiCaprio and Anderson’s main concern was making a great movie, and they felt del Toro would help them achieve that aim, so they waited for him. It’s yet to be seen whether One Battle After Another is a significant enough hit to justify its large budget, but critics are high on it, as reflected in its 97% Rotten Tomatoes score.

One Battle After Another explodes into theaters on September 26.