Watch Jude Law & Colin Firth in the Genius trailer

In the 1930s-set drama Genius, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg’s 1978 book “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius,” Colin Firth stars as the famed New York book editor, Max Perkins, with Jude Law as hard-drinking, hard-living Southern novelist Thomas Wolfe.

Theater director Michael Grandage makes his feature debut. The film also stars Nicole Kidman as Wolfe’s costume designer girlfriend, Aline Bernstein, and Laura Linney as Perkins’ long-suffering wife, Louise Saunders. Guy Pearce and Dominic West co-star as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, respectively.