George Clooney no long playing White Jazz

White Jazz is turning into a bit of a nightmare for director Joe Carnahan. Only last week, he lost his chosen second-lead actor (Chris Pine) to the captain’s chair on Star Trek and now he’s facing the lost of his star and producer, George Clooney.

The reason? Clooney’s a busy boy. "It just simply came down to scheduling," Clooney's producing partner, Grant Heslov told Entertainment Weekly. "George continues to believe in the project and in Joe." Between shooting the Coen brothers’ latest, Burn After Reading, doing the publicity tour thang for Michael Clayton and more editing work on his comedy Leatherheads, he just couldn’t find a clear spot for Jazz.

Now the film, which was based at Warner Independent, seems to have dropped off the company’s production slate. Whether it’ll actually get made is up in the air, but perhaps Carnahan can switch to his next planned project, book adaptation Killing Pablo, before returning to the James Ellroy story.