Sean Penn is taking an undetermined sabbatical for possibly as much as a year to focus on his family according to Variety.

That means he has bowed out of two films: Cartel and The Three Stooges.

I was looking forward to seeing him as Joe in The Three Stooges. The studio might wait for Penn to return from his long holiday.  Cartel is pretty much a cut-and-dried type story we see at least once a year in the movie theaters. The studio is making a list to cast the part, so production can start this fall.

Apparently, Penn’s decision caught the studios by surprise, but I bet his wife, Robin Wright, is happy.

Penn has two films in the can that are to be released next year:  Fair Game and The Tree of Life.