It’s out with the old and in with the new for Sean Penn.
The actor will direct new girlfriend Charlize Theron this summer in “The Last Face” — a love story set in an African refugee camp.
This is the script that Penn’s ex-wife Robin Wright — the mother of his two children — had tried for years to develop.
“This is obviously a vindictive move against his ex-wife, for whom ‘The Last Face’ was a labor of love,” one movie-making source told me.
“I hope Theron knows she’s being played by Penn as a childish revenge tool against Robin Wright,” a commenter wrote on The Wrap Web site.
Theron and Javier Bardem will star as doctors doing humanitarian relief work in Africa trying to save the victims of tribal warfare while making difficult moral decisions.
French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is the Warmest Color”) will play a journalist. She and Penn were spotted having dinner in Paris twice last month.
The original script was set in the mid-’90s in Central Africa, where the Hutus and the Tutsis were bent on genocide. The updated action takes place in Sudan and Liberia.
A source tells me, “Sean was never involved in the project back then [except as a member of the cast].
“Erin Dignam was to write and direct with Robin to star. They couldn’t get it financed and moved on. Years later, Erin sold the project to Matt Palmieri. Matt brought it to Sean to direct.”
Wright doesn’t need Penn’s project, having revived her career with her brilliant performance in “House of Cards.” The actress, engaged to 15-years-younger “Rampart” co-star Ben Foster, hits the big screen next year as a mountain climber in “Everest” with Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin and Emily Watson.
Reps for Theron and Wright did not get back to me.