Cross Creek Pictures and Brad Pitt’s Plan B are teaming with writer Tony Kushner to develop medical research drama “He Wanted the Moon.”

The project is a co-production with Cross Creek’s Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson producing with Plan B. The companies have acquired movie rights to the memoir, written by Dr. Perry Baird’s daughter Mimi and Eve Claxton, titled “He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter’s Quest to Know Him.”

Baird was a rising medical star in the late ’20s and ’30s who researched the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, he had been institutionalized multiple times and he had become estranged from his family. He later received a lobotomy and died from a seizure.

Kushner received the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1993 for his play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” He also received Academy Award screenplay nominations for “Munich” with Eric Roth and for “Lincoln” along with a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013.

Pitt and producing partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner have received an Oscar best picture nomination for “The Big Short,” two years after winning for “12 Years a Slave.” Cross Creek’s credits include “Black Mass,” “Pride And Prejudice And Zombies,” “Everest,” the upcoming Tom Cruise movie “Mena” and “Hacksaw Ridge,” starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Mel Gibson.

Kushner is repped by CAA. Mimi Baird is repped by APA and Carol Mann Literary Agency. The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.

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