Things simply haven't been going well for McG lately. His Terminator: Salvation was not only expensive and not profitable, but savaged by critics and fans who wished he'd left the franchise alone. His next big project was supposed to be a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake at Disney, but the studio ditched that project when it looked to be going to route of Terminator: Salvation, i.e. expensive and unprofitable.

Now even McG's attempt to make a small romantic comedy is falling apart. Entertainment Weekly reports that Bradley Cooper has dropped out of This Means War, a romantic comedy that McG planned to direct with Cooper and another actor playing longtime friends who do battle when they fall for the same woman (Reese Witherspoon). The official reason was given that Cooper needed the time to film The Hangover 2, but EW learned the actor had concerns with the script, which has been through a merry-go-round of rewrites in over a decade of development.

With All About Steve still an ugly blister on his resume, Cooper knows he's got to hang on to this rising star status and make as many good decisions as he can so that we don't instantly get sick of him (Gerard Butler, you are veering very close to this territory). With every movie he makes that's a hit (Valentine's Day has made $88 million so far), Cooper gets more power to avoid projects that smell fishy like this one. Odds are he'll be replaced by another actor quickly, as it's a priority project for Fox. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Witherspoon bail too-- these things have a way of falling apart like that.