EXCLUSIVE: Sean Penn, coming off his third Oscar win for One Battle After Another, has been quietly setting up a passion project. And it’s a doozy.

The currently untitled film will follow the early life of a cop who goes on to be caught up in the January 6th Capitol riots. Penn has scripted and will direct the movie, which has five-time Oscar nominated actor Bradley Cooper in talks to star in the lead role. There’s no deal yet.

The film will re-team Penn with One Battle After Another studio Warner Bros, which has acquired it in a negative pickup. Penn will produce with John Ira Palmer and John Wildermuth under their Projected Picture Works banner. CAA Media Finance negotiated the WB deal on behalf of the producers.

Production is being targeted for mid-2027 given Cooper’s commitments on the next Oceans film.

The project has been described to us as an unexpected story about friendship. But it will function on multiple levels. Based on one of the real-life cops caught up in the Capitol attack, the project is understood to have buy-in from its subject, however their identity is being kept under wraps for now.

We’re told the focus is on the subject’s early journey, one that led to him later becoming an American hero in the eyes of many. It’s not a ‘January 6th movie’ per se. Nonetheless, given the still divisive terrain, the political climate, and the studio’s potential new owners, it’s a commendable commitment by Warner Bros, which has had big success recently with bold original stories.

Penn, known for his strong political convictions, previously attended a public hearing of the House select committee investigating the deadly 2021 insurrection. At the time, Penn said he was there to observe as “just another citizen” to see if justice would be served. He sat alongside several law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol. Among those he was seen speaking to were Michael Fanone, the former Washington D.C. police officer who was severely injured and beaten on the day.

You don’t have to squint hard to see a strong resemblance between Cooper and Fanone, but sources wouldn’t be drawn on whether the latter is the subject of the film. It may not turn out to be him, but Fanone’s story is a compelling one. He served as a cop from 2001 until his retirement in 2021, and like Cooper has Italian heritage. A one-time Trump supporter, he joined the Capitol Police in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, but later fell out of love with the President. The divorced father of four daughters, who has faced relentless threats from political extremists, wrote a book called Hold The Line, in which he detailed multiple unlikely friendships, including with a Black transgender sex worker named Leslie, whom he brought to meet younger officers to foster understanding of the diverse communities they swore to protect, and with folk icon Joan Baez, stemming from a portrait she painted of him defending the Capitol.

Either way, this is fertile ground for Penn and Cooper. Cooper has played the complex American patriot before, most famously in American Sniper. Penn has directed powerful character studies, including Oscar-nominated Into The Wild and underrated Jack Nicholson thriller The Pledge; he also knows the terrain from lauded turns in movies like Milk and Mystic River.

There’s fun connective tissue between Penn and Cooper. The two had supporting roles in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, but are also known for their viral interaction from a 1994 episode of Inside The Actor’s Studio when 24 year-old Cooper, then a second year acting student, asked Penn a question from the audience. Penn would go on to champion Cooper’s work, notably writing a glowing op-ed for Deadline describing A Star Is Born as “a triumph”.

Penn and Projected Picture Works are represented by CAA; Cooper is represented by Range Media Partners.