Barry Levinson is now directing David Mamet’s JFK assassination movie

Back in May, we heard about the interesting cast of Assassination, a David Mamet-penned drama about mobster Sam Giancana’s supposed involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—with Giancana’s nephew, Nicholas Celozzi, involved behind the scenes. Mamet was supposed to direct the movie himself, a rare move for him that afforded us the opportunity to point out some of his Trumpy political opinions.

But now Mamet is less involved than he was before, with Deadline reporting that Rain Man, Paterno, and You Don’t Know Jack director Barry Levinson has stepped in to take over for Mamet on Assassination, making this their latest collaboration after 1997’s Wag The Dog and HBO’s Phil Spector (which Levinson was an executive producer on). Deadline doesn’t say what prompted the shift, but Levinson will apparently be “putting his own stamp” on Assassination. Maybe that means he has some kind of specific take that varies from what Mamet had planned,

The aforementioned cast is also apparently unchanged, though Deadline only specifically mentions Shia LaBeouf and Al Pacino (SAG-AFTRA is still on strike anyway, so we might not know one way or another until the studios eventually back down and give the actors what they want and deserve, which they should do as soon as possible). Last we heard, the cast also included John Travolta, Viggo Mortensen, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Courtney Love, which runs the gamut from “huh” to “huh” pretty nicely. And, really, shouldn’t all movies casts be like that?

There’s no word on when Assassination might be released, but they just changed directors and there’s a strike going on, so it probably won’t be any time soon. All we ask is that they don’t change the cast at all at any point.