If you thought the only drama and craziness around compiling a dictionary was to be found in Blackadder's Ink & Incapability, think again! Here come Mel Gibson and Sean Penn in controversial new pic The Professor And The Madman, which has its first trailer online.
Farhad Safinia and Todd Komarnicki adapted Simon Winchester's bestseller, originally titled The Surgeon Of Crowthorne into a script that Gibson has been trying to get made since 1998. He's 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.
The real drama, though, has not necessarily been on the screen. Gibson and his Icon Productions company has been waging a legal battle against fellow financier Voltage Pictures over final cut and some additional shooting days. Which means that this trailer has more snuck out than been released, with Gibson trying unsuccessfully to block this version and director Safinia's name replaced in the credits by PB Shemran (sic).
This issue looks set to run for a while, and the film doesn't have a release date in place for either the States or the UK. The IMDB does, however, have it listed as already on screens in Croatia, with other European countries and Mexico scheduled to roll out as the month progresses.
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