It's looked for a long while that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was going to have a very good year in 2012. After major roles in hits "(500) Days Of Summer" and "Inception," and an acclaimed turn last year in "50/50," the actor has a number of major parts lined up for the coming months. He's leading actioner "Premium Rush," he's got a key, still-top-secret part in "The Dark Knight Rises," he's reunited with Rian Johnson for sci-fi "Looper," and he'll crop up among the ensemble cast of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln." All that, and he's got his collaborative wet project hitRECord, and he's looking to get underway on his directorial debut, "Don Jon's Addiction," with Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore, very shortly.
But sadly, it looks like the latter has meant that the actor's had to drop out of another of the year's most anticipated films, which he had a small role in. Gordon-Levitt had been pegged for a minor part in Quentin Tarantino's revenge Western "Django Unchained," joining Anthony LaPaglia as part of a trio of Australian bandits in the film's later stages, but the actor tells MTV that his busy schedule, particularly when it comes to prepping for "Don Jon's Addiction," has meant that he's had to drop out of the film.
Gordon-Levitt tells the site "No, I'm not going to get to do that. I'd love to, but it just doesn't work. I've been in touch with Quentin about it, and it was so cool to trust me to do this little part in his movie. I would have loved, loved to have done it. He's one of my very favorite filmmakers, and he was really supportive of me directing, and that meant the world to me."
It's a shame, certainly, but it's not like Gordon-Levitt is starving for work. And it's not like Tarantino's film is light on A-list talent either; the picture features Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Kurt Russell, James Remar, Don Johnson, Sacha Baron Cohen and RZA, among others. There's no word on who'll be replacing Gordon-Levitt yet, but we maintain that our original suggestion, "Animal Kingdom" stand-out Ben Mendelsohn, would knock the part out of the park. Filming gets underway on Gordon-Levitt's "Don Jon's Addiction" soon, while "Django Unchained" hits theaters on December 25th.