While this is described as a movie about a cop who eventually gets caught up in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, it’s “not a ‘January 6th movie,'” in the words of Deadline. Instead, it’s “an unexpected story about friendship” that focuses on the life of real cops who were there that day. Those officers are reportedly on board with the project, though they haven’t been publicly named as of yet. Deadline reports that “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 especially surprising (or “unexpected”) that Penn would handle this subject matter. In 2022, he attended one of the January 6 hearings just to see what was up. What is somewhat unexpected, however, is that, should Warner’s merger with Paramount go through, this movie would end up the product of a corporation that has bent over backwards to appease the President. The president in question granted a whole bunch of pardons to people who were there that day immediately upon taking office in 2025 and still baselessly maintains that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In any case, Penn was spotted at the hearing talking to Officer Michael Fanone, who Deadline speculates could be the subject of the still-untitled movie. Fanone was a Capitol police officer and one-time Trump supporter who was beaten on January 6 and ended up striking some unexpected friendships, including, apparently, with Joan Baez. This is covered in his book Hold The Line, which Penn blurbed according to its Amazon listing, so, yeah, this is probably the source material.
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