As he ponders whether or not to return to the Millennium trilogy with The Girl Who Played With Fire, we now know one possible feature David Fincher is definitely taking off his list. Vulture reports that talks between Fincher and Sony for their long-in-development, big-budget take on Cleopatra have fell apart. The biopic has Angelina Jolie attached and has had other major directors like James Cameron and Paul Greengrass circling at various points.

We also have word of a potential replacement, as the studio is still intent on making the film and are looking at others, including Brokeback Mountain Oscar-winner Ang Lee. With his big-budget take on Life of Pi getting strong buzz and a NYFF slot, it seems like a good time to return to world of tentpole creating, after this attempt with Hulk didn’t turn out so well.

As previously reported, Brian Helgeland wrote the first draft from Stacy Schiff‘s Cleopatra: A Life novel, with Eric Roth stepping in for a rewrite. Check out producer Scott Rudin’s previous comments on the project below, as we wait on who will officially step in for Fincher, who may look to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as his next option.

“It is a completely revisionist Cleopatra, a much more grown-up sophisticated version. She’s not a sex kitten, she’s a politician, strategist, warrior. In the Joseph Mankiewicz movie, Elizabeth Taylor is a seductress, but the histories of Cleopatra have been written by men. This is the first to be written by a woman. It felt like such a blow-the-doors-off-the-hinges idea of how to tell it, impossible to resist.”

Who do you think should helm Cleopatra?