Brad Pitt just dropped out of the currently filming movie “State of Play” over script concerns, according to Reuters:

Brad Pitt has pulled out of Universal’s political thriller “State of Play” because of script concerns. The move comes after a couple of weeks of meetings between Pitt and director Kevin Macdonald (”The Last King of Scotland”) in an attempt to iron out the concerns.

Considering the ongoing WGA strike movies that already have their scripts in place can go ahead with filming and are allowed only to either change who says lines or remove lines. No other changes can be made. So at this point when someone doesn’t like something and wants it redone, well they can’t. So did Pitt use this as an excuse to drop out? No clue here, but that’d be a sneaky way to do it these days.

“State of Play” is an adaptation of a BBC miniseries which sounds more like it was an adaptation of US Congressman Gary Condit’s mysterious involvement with Chandra Levy’s disappearance back in 2001:

A team of investigative reporters work alongside a police detective to try and solve the murder of a congressman’s mistress.

Since the movie is in the middle of filming, Universal is working quickly to find a replacement. Current leaders in that search are Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe. Crowe is in the middle of filming “Body Of Lies” with Ridley Scott right now though, so I’d put my money on Depp instead.