According to The Hollywood Reporter, Natalie Dormer (“Game of Thrones,” The Hunger Games series) is set to co-star with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn in Icon Productions‘ adaptation of Simon Winchester’s best-seller The Professor and the Madman.
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 was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.
Screenwriter Farhad Safinia (Apocalypto) will make his feature directing debut on The Professor and the Madman after co-writing the screenplay with John Boorman and Todd Komarnicki.