It was with great enthusiasm that I first talked about an upcoming project called “State of Play”, a political thriller that was going to reunite Brad Pitt and Ed Norton (the two were pure magic together in Fight Club). Anytime you get two amazing leads in the same film it’s something worth talking about.

However, the other day word came down that Brad Pitt walked off the project due to “script issues”. The word coming out now is that these “script issues” had to do with a couple of changes Pitt wanted, but since there is a writers strike at the moment no changes can be made, and the studio doesn’t want to wait to start production. So, Pitt walked. Such a damn shame.

Anyway, it looks like there’s a chance Norton will be joined by another top notch actor (the best alive today in my opinion) to replace Pitt. Russell Crowe. The good folks over at Moviehole give us this:

The role Pitt exited and Crowe is considering is a politico-turned-journalist who spearheads his newspaper’s investigation into a killing that leads to a fast-rising pol (Edward Norton). The journalist faces two conflicts: He once ran campaigns for the pol and was his confidant, and the journo develops a romance with the pol’s estranged wife (Robin Wright Penn). Will Crowe do it? that depends on whether it clashes with his next film “Nottingham”, the Robin Hood pic that he’s doing with (of course) Ridley Scott, which is due to kick off in March.

It would be great if this actually worked out.