Just a few months ago, things were looking bright for Doug Liman‘s Luna. Many Hollywood stars — including Andrew Garfield, Emile Hirsch, Chris Pine, Bradley Cooper, and Chris Evans — were being sought for the lead role, while female actresses such as Rosario Dawson, Rachel McAdams, and Olivia Wilde had their names mentioned in conjunction with a major part.

Written by him and John Hamburg, a plot description can be read below:

“The story centers on a renegade group of former space employees, led by an Eastern European woman, who travel the world, stealing space equipment in an attempt to go back to the moon to acquire an energy source. The last item to steal — or in this case, kidnap — is an ex-NASA employee.”

If that sounds interesting to you, then I have bad news: Vulture has learned that Warner Bros. is not going forward with the project, due to concerns over a budget that was apparently surpassing the $100 million mark. Co-financier Skydance was wavering on the prospect of funneling money toward the production, so they pulled out, and things didn’t get better from there. Not that this is a movie I was really pining to see, but it could have been a fun sci-fi adventure, especially if they got some of the hoped-for cast. Unfortunate, but Liman will have something else to focus his time on.

That’s because Warner Bros. is now trying to make All You Need is Kill, another sci-fi project that he was confirmed to direct last August. The Dante Harper-written adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka‘s manga series is centered on “a new recruit in a war against aliens who finds himself caught in a time loop in which he wakes up in the past after having been killed on the battlefield.” Over time, his soldier skills grow “as he attempts to change his fate.” You could say that it sounds like a mix of Groundhog Day and Source Code, although the latter is so heavily inspired by the former that it might be a little contradictory.

One of the studio’s main goals for this project is casting Brad Pitt in the lead role, something that can be done now that issues with the third act have been cleared up — the story started “to play like a big-screen version of Halo.” However, his involvement with David O. Russell‘s The Mission, which is also set up at the studio, means that it may not be so easy to get him on board. Russell has The Silver Linings Playbook shooting this year; if he gets around to this next film in 2012, the schedules of Pitt and Kill could get pretty tangled. Some points in this project’s favor could be attributed to he and Liman having a history together, with the two of them collaborating on Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Being a versatile actor with a widely-varying filmography means that I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pitt sign on, but, again: all his current and future commitments might put a stop to that. Still, there are certainly other people that the studio could cast in the lead, so it shouldn’t be a complete impediment to its progress.

Would you have been interested in Luna? What do you think of Pitt as the lead of Kill?