Mel Gibson, Sean Penn to Star in ‘The Professor and The Madman’

The Professor and The Madman is an upcoming film about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Mel Gibson is set to star, and now Sean Penn may be hopping on board, according to the Variety report.

In a surprising twist, Mel Gibson will not be playing the madman. Then again, Sean Penn playing the madman isn’t much of a stretch. Gibson is professor James Murray, who began putting together the bones of the Dictionary in the mid 1800s. If Penn joins the film, he will be Dr. William Chester Minor, an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane who submitted over 10,000 entries.

So there you have it, two of the most volatile actors in the modern era of Hollywood possibly starring in a film about the history of a famous dictionary. I can’t imagine anyone had this in their pool.

This also continues to cement Mel Gibson’s comeback. His new directorial effort, Hacksaw Ridge, has an action-packed new trailer, and he even wants to do a sequel to The Passion of The Christ. Penn, meanwhile, is coming off the failure of The Gunman and the extremely weird Rolling Stone interview with El Chapo.

Gibson is on board as producer, with his Apocalypto screenwriter Farhad Safinia taking over as director. I can only imagine what the set of The Professor and The Madman might be like.