Tweet

After years and years of making great film after great film, Steven Spielberg now seems to yet another director who just can’t seem to make up his mind on what he wants to make. In a time when Steven Soderbergh and Woody Allen are releasing two, sometimes three films per year, Spielberg is taking his time. And for the most part, that has led to the on-again, off-again rhythm of developing films. He was developing a Lincoln biopic for Liam Neeson, and has since left that in limbo. He was also working on casting The Trial of the Chicago 7 while in post-production for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That project has since been handed off to Ben Stiller.

And now, according to Variety, Spielberg is leaving Harvey hanging in the wind. The pic was supposed to be an adaptation of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a about a man who befriends a six and a half foot tall invisible rabbit — has been a challenge to pull together since Spielberg committed last August. One of the biggest challenges has been setting a star to play Elwood P. Dowd, the character played by James Stewart in the 1950 film. His first choice was Tom Hanks, but Hanks wasn’t interested. Spielberg then moved on to Robert Downey Jr., but is said to have never found a good script that would get Downey to commit.

Fox 2000 is said to be continuing the push to get a Harvey movie done, but they will now have to do it without Spielberg. This is what happens, of course, when you’re an in-demand legend who likes to attach his name to just about everything. For Spielberg, the future slate includes finishing the Tintin films (one of which has already been shooting) with Peter Jackson, and continuing to foster some of the stories in development at the newly rooted Dreamworks, including another Transformers film, the Michael Crichton adaptation Pirate Latitudes and the Hugh Jackman led action film Real Steel.

Where Spielberg will go next as a director is unclear. What we do know is that he will likely continue to attach his name to projects, giving us plenty to talk about in the coming years.