TRAILER: The Professor & The Madman

The Professor and The Madman (Portuguese) Trailer. Jan 3 premiere Portugal, no info on any other release as yet pic.twitter.com/pzBBVRsweq

— Mel Gibson (@MelGibsonFilms) December 6, 2018

UPDATED:  Above is the first trailer for this movie.

PREVIOUSLY: I forgot about this.  It is news from earlier in the week.

The book  The Professor and the Madman is being put on the big screen.  Mel Gibson is the driving force behind this one.

Gibson, who acquired the film rights to the Simon Winchester book back in 1998, is poised to star opposite Penn, who is in negotiations, in the true story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary — a tale that delves into madness, genius and two obsessive men who changed the course of literary history.

Gibson won the rights to the movie version in 1998 but hasn’t really done anything with it.  He originally intended to direct but has now handed that duty to Apocalypto (manly masterpiece!) writer Farhad Safinia.

Gibson will play Professor James Murray, who in 1857 set about compiling the OED, one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. Penn will play Dr. W.C. Minor, who submitted more than 10,000 entries but also was an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane. Safinia wrote the screenplay, while Todd Komarnicki and John Boorman penned an earlier draft.

Two nasty words here though.  Voltage and Pictures.  If Voltage Pictures doesn’t ring a bell, think Steven Seagal DTVs.  But keep in mind they also made bigger movies like The Hurt Locker.