Sean Penn May Play Legendary Literary Editor Max Perkins In 'Genius'

After a second Oscar win for "Milk," and a self-imposed exile from acting for close to a year, Sean Penn is getting back in the game. "Fair Game" debuted at Cannes this year (albeit to mixed reviews), he starts filming on Paolo Sorrentino's odd-sounding revenge thriller "This Must Be The Place" shortly, and he recently attached himself to a biopic of surfing legend Dorian 'Doc' Pascowitz. Now, it looks like Penn might be close to signing on to another true-life tale.

The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Penn is in talks to topline the long-gestating project "Genius," an adaptation by John Logan ("Gladiator") of the National Book Award-winning non-fiction work "Max Perkins: Editor Of Genius," by A. Scott Berg. Penn would play Perkins, a literary editor at the publishing house Scribners, who discovered and nurtured F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, remaining close to them throughout his life.

The screenplay, which made the Black List in 2007, focuses on Perkins' relationship with Thomas Wolfe, who's often cited as one of the 20th century's greatest writers (and is a favorite of several Playlist staffers). Wolfe was a great writer, but a notoriously undisciplined one, and the two fought constantly — Perkins eventually convincing the author to cut 90,000 words from his first novel, "Look Homeward, Angel," and battling for two years over the length of the second — and Wolfe eventually grew resentful of how much of his success was being attributed to Perkins, and left the publishing house. Coincidentally, this story originally came in at nearly 15,000 words, and it's only through the efforts of the ever hard-working Playlist editing team that it was salvaged...

The project's been knocking around for a while, and nearly happened with Lawrence Kasdan in the director's chair, and Michael London ("Sideways") producing. But with writer Logan very hot after the success of his Broadway play "Red," it's gained a new life, with producer Bill Pohlad, who worked with Penn on "Into The Wild," "Fair Game" and "Tree of Life," stepping in. Pohlad will also direct for the first time since "Old Explorers" in 1990.

It certainly sounds like a premise ripe for drama, and a great role for Penn, even if we'd probably be reassured by the presence of a surer hand than Pohlad in the director's chair. But even so, in a time when its becoming harder and harder to get highbrow dramas made, it's great to see a project as potentially uncommercial as this one move forward. Unless they get Taylor Lautner to play Wolfe, obviously.