While The Professor And The Madman is a stranger-than-fiction true story of how the Oxford English Dictionary was wrangled into existence, it's also really a film that will pair Sean Penn and Mel Gibson. And added to the mix now is Game Of Thrones veteran Natalie Dormer.
Farhad Safinia has adapted Simon Winchester's bestseller into a script that Gibson has been trying to get made since 1998. He'll play Professor James Murray, who began compiling the OED in 1857, kicking off one of the most ambitious projects in history. Penn is Dr W.C. Minor, who submitted more than 10,000 entries while also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane. You really couldn't make it up, and people might laugh if you did.
Dormer is set as the widow of one of Penn's victims, and the imprisoned doctor is trying to help her family. According to The Hollywood Reporter, this leads to a complicated romance. "Complicated" sounds like an understatement.
Safinia is set to direct, and the cameras should be cranking later in September. Dormer was last seen on the big screen in The Forest and has several films in the works, including Patient Zero, Official Secrets and In Darkness, which she co-wrote.