Actress Natalie Dormer attends 2016 World Humanitarian Day: One Humanity Event at the United Nations on August 19, 2016 in New York City. (Photo : Getty Images / Michael Loccisano)
"Game of Thrones" actress Natalie Dormer is now onboard "The Professor and the Madman" with multi-awarded actors Sean Penn and Mel Gibson. The project is the adaptation of the best-seller by Simon Winchester about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Directing the movie is Farhad Safinia, who penned the Gibson-directed "Apocalypto" in 2006.
The upcoming movie is based on a fascinating true story revolving around two obsessive men, a genius and a mad man who changed the course of literary history. They have contributed to the world's greatest literary achievements and to the history of English letters.
Dormer plays a widow whose husband was killed by Penn's character, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The latter wants to help and such will lead to a complicated romance.
Gibson portrays Professor James Murray who compiled the OED in 1857. Penn plays Dr. William Chester Minor, an inmate at an asylum for criminally insane people who submitted over 10,000 neat, hand-written entries to the OED.
After Minor refused several times that Murray visits him, the latter tried to find a way to locate him. Murray learned that the expert wordsmith was an insane killer imprisoned in the harshest asylum for criminal lunatics in Broadmoor, England, according to Goodreads in its review of the book "The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary."
Gibson acquired the film rights of the book in 1998 and developed it as a directing vehicle. Gibson gave the directorial reins to Farhad Safinia who will have his debut with the film.
The Australian-American actor and directer has been reportedly trying to get "The Professor and the Madman" off the ground since 1998. It is finally happening with principal photography set in late September.
Bruce Davey and Gibson's Icon Entertainment are producing while Voltage Pictures, the firm behind "Dallas Buyers Club" and "The Hurt Locker" is backing the film. It is repping the project's international rights and will sell it at the Toronto International Film Festival. Safinia penned the screenplay while the earlier draft was done by John Boorman and Todd Komarnicki.
Dormer will soon commence production of "In Darkness." She co-wrote the indie psychological revenge thriller with its director Anthony Bryne. Stacy Martin, Emilay Ratajkowski and Ed Skrein are her co-stars in the film.
Here is the news of Dormer joining Gibson and Penn's movie.
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