Variety reports that Sean Penn announced he will pull out of two projects for unspecified personal reasons related to family.
Penn will no longer star in Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly's The Three Stooges, in which he was to play Larry opposite Jim Carrey as Curly and Benicio Del Toro as Moe. He also withdrew from Cartel. In the Asger Leth-directed drama, scripted by Peter Craig, a man struggles to protect his son after his wife is killed in the world of Mexican drug cartels.
It is unclear how long Penn will be on hiatus. Prior to the announcement, he had already completed two other projects, which should still see release. The first is Fair Game, the Doug Liman-directed biopic based on the memoir of CIA agent Valerie
Plame (with Naomi Watts in the starring role). The other is The Tree of Life, which stars Brad Pitt and was directed by Terrence Malick (The New World, The Thin Red Line).