According to ABC News reports last night, Sean Penn has been cast as the lead in the Paul Haggis-directed screen version of Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. Though we rarely get casting reports from broadcast news outlets, Nikki Finke of LA Weekly points out that, since Clarke works as an analyst for ABC, the network was unusually well-positioned for this scoop.

Interestingly, Finke also reports that Penn -- who she describes, somewhat regretfully, as "box office poison" -- was far from Sony's first choice for the role. Instead, the studio first approached both Al Gore's Chief Justice Penn's fellow liberal activist George Clooney and Russell Crowe, both of whom (presumably) were unavailable. While the Clooney thing isn't exactly surprising (Honestly, right now, what studio wouldn't want him to star in its film? Plus, it's a political project in which one could understandably assume he might be interested.), the approach of Crowe is interesting, and suggests that Jeffery Wells' script review -- he described the film as a tight, possibly-great political thriller -- was probably pretty accurate (who casts Crowe these days in something that's not really, really serious?).