White Jazz may not be dead, but it sure isn’t healthy.

The hype for White Jazz was pretty great, acclaimed director Joe Carnahan is a fan of the novel and has made it known he wanted to make a classic film from the James Ellroy novel.

Oscar Winner/Hollywood icon George Clooney was attached for the lead, with Chris Pine seemingly set to play Clooney’ sidekick and rumors of Charlize Theron for the main lass.

Now Pine has opted to play Captain Kirk for the re-launch of Star Trek and George Clooney has dropped out to focus on the other dozen or so projects on his plate right now.

It now looks like White Jazz is quickly becoming a distant memory.

Carnahan is making plans to move forward with Killing Pablo, his story of the life and capture of notorious Columbian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. This would keep him tied up at least until mid 2008.

While this does not mean it will never be made (see Void Moon’s rebirth), it appears we won’t see it at least until 2009.

This seriously bums me out, the screenplay was pretty good and the lead was a much darker role than we normally see George do. I think this would have been a good one.