Two-time Academy Award winner Sean Penn (Milk, Mystic River) is in talks to play late literary editor Max Perkins in the film Genius.
This would allow Penn to team up again with longtime collaborator Bill Pohlad. The pair most recently worked together on Into the Wild. Penn directed that 2007 film while Pohland produced and helped finance it.
Genius is the film adaptation of the biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg, published in 2008. It won a National Book award and received rave reviews. Writer John Logan (Sweeny Todd) wrote the script for the film.
Max Perkins is considered one of the most famous literary editors of all time. He worked with some of the biggest names in American literature like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. This film will focus on his working relationship with Thomas Wolfe and feature lots of other literary figures.