Just a few days after Chris Pine decided to star in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek over Joe Carnahan’s White Jazz, George Clooney has left the film as well. But it’s not all bad news, according to Carnahan:
Rough weekend. I had a bad feeling after they pushed ‘Leatherheads’ to April because of the extensive post on that film that something was going to have to give. Also, George is neck deep in the Coen bros. film at the moment and trying to do ‘Michael Clayton’ press which will likely carry over into Awards season…SO…they wanted to see about pushing White Jazz back, which I really don’t want to do. I’ve been waiting awhile to make this one and I wasn’t content to sit on my hands.
Right now, (actually it began on friday) we’re in the process of trying to plug a guy into this movie that, if it works, would be pretty f*cking amazing. No, INCREDIBLY f*cking amazing, so we’ll see what happens.
No tears kids. This is the business. It happens all the time and you’ve got to have the balls and the ability to push past in spite of these setbacks.
We march on.
White Jazz will be based on the James Ellroy crime novel. Clooney was set to play a dirty LAPD vice squad lieutenant whose mastery at skirting the rules gets tested when he’s set up by his crooked bosses to be the fall guy for a murder.
