Sean Penn wants to go home.

Sean Penn, acclaimed actor and recent Oscar winner for his performance in Milk, decided to throw the career on pause for a moment and go back home for awhile. Dropping out of two high profile movies, Cartel and The Three Stooges, his personal life will be in peace but these projects will not. The first of the two projects, The Three Stooges, is a Farrelly brothers piece that has been in development for years and got off the ground big time when they nabbed their cast in late March. Now with the sudden loss of one of their main actors, and the oncoming filming date set for the end of the summer, the Farrelly brothers must scramble to fill up the slot of stooge Larry in time or fear for loosing other actors due to production push.

The second flick to hit the breaks is Asger Leth’s Cartel, a crime drama that follows a man who journeys to protect his son after his wife is murdered by Mexican drug cartels (The Hollywood Reporter). Now that Penn jumped off the feature, Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures are on the hunt for another lead.