Mel Gibson And Sean Pean Teaming Up For A Leather-Off Called THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN

The Mel Gibson comeback continues. That may be something that bums you out or perhaps you are happy to have the guy back. Either way, it seems to be on.

Today the Mel Gibson comeback arrives in the form of news from The Hollywood Reporter that Gibson and Sean Penn are teaming up to make The Professor and the Madman, a project Gibson has been wanting to make since he got the rights to the book back in 1998.

The plot involves the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, dearest friend to English majors everywhere. Gibson will play Professor James Murray, the guy who got the OED together. Penn will play Madman W.C. Minor, who contributed over 10,000 entries while also being a crazy person in an asylum. My kind of guy. Apocalypto writer Farhad Safinia will direct and wrote the film, though there was an earlier draft by Todd Komarnicki and John Boorman.

While my heart would prefer this team up be a hard R-rated movie about rival assassins who suddenly find themselves calling a truce to train a dogsledding team or something stupid like that, I’ll definitely take a talky movie about how these two guys got the OED in the hands of college students eager to see where the word “taint” originated. In other words, there’s no way I’m not seeing this. The Professor and the Madman is expected to start filming this September.