Steven Spielberg has walked away from the HARVEY remake after developing the project for the past six months, reports VARIETY. The film was set to start filming on the Fox lot in early 2010, but this week DreamWorks pulled the plug.

The trouble with the adaptation of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play was finding an actor to play the lead Elwood P. Dowd, which was played in the original 1950 film by James Stewart. Originally, Spielberg wanted Tom Hanks, but the actor did want to try and match the iconic performance. Next Robert Downey Jr. was considered, but he wanted changes to Jonathan Tropper's script and he and Spielberg could never come to a creative middle ground.

So Spielberg is now again looking for his first project with the Reliance-funded DreamWorks. It could be his long-in-the-works Lincoln biopic written by MUNICH's Tony Kushner, or THE 39 CLUES, written by Jeff Nathanson.