Editorials > Clooney Out of White Jazz

More bad news for Joe Carnahan. Chris Pine ditched him last week for the captain's chair in Star Trek XI, and now the biggest star in the world (official title?) has also opted not to continue with White Jazz. Hear it from the horse's mouth:

Kids:

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.

JC

White Jazz will be based on a James Ellroy (LA Confidential) novel. Clooney was supposed to be playing a dirty cop who gets framed for murder by his bosses in 1950s LA. Sounds like a promising project with or without Clooney, but it's still going to be tough to try to match that kind of starpower.

Written by David Morgan