Okay, so first Joe Carnahan loses Chris Pine who was supposed to star as Junior Stemmons in Carnahan’s White Jazz alongside George Clooney. Pine decided taking the role as Captain James T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot was a better career move and who could blame him. However, there seems to be even more trouble on the Jazz-y front as Entertainment Weekly is now reporting that Clooney has also dropped off the project.
This comes as quite the surprising news, but Carnahan doesn’t seem detered as he has posted this on his blog:
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.
“It just simply came down to scheduling,” says Clooney’s producing partner, Grant Heslov, to Entertainment Weekly. “George continues to believe in the project and in Joe.”
Belief or not, the movie now sits without a cast member of any sort as Carnahan tries to fill the role. Clooney was 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.
If Carnahan is indeed getting ready to cast someone new I expect we will hear news shortly as he is out scouting locations in Los Angeles and production is expected to begin in mid-January.
