RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven leaves Thomas Crown Affair sequel

RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven was tapped a few years ago to helm a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair with star Pierce Brosnan returning as the millionaire playboy who robs banks for kicks.

During a recent interview with MTV News to promote his new book, Jesus of Nazareth, Verhoeven updated his status on the long-in-development project, which at one point had Angelina Jolie attached to co-star.

“No, I am not [involved] anymore,” Verhoeven told MTV. “Things happened there, the regime changed. The initial ideas that they had about Thomas Crown 2 were interesting I thought. There was a script written by two young writers that used the fact that now we’re living 15, 20 years later.”

Verhoeven continued, “Ultimately, [the studio] decided not to [use] that script anymore. Then there was a regime change. And basically I felt that I could not follow [on the project].”

The report stressed that the news of Verhoeven’s departure doesn’t necessarily mean that a Thomas Crown Affair sequel is off. Verhoeven however has apparently moved on to other projects, including a possible film adaptation of Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner’s PC video game The Last Express. There may also be an adaptation of his Jesus of Nazareth book in the works, and a thriller called contemporary thriller called The Surrogate, based on a 2004 novel by Kathryn Mackel, which centers on a couple who find out that the college student they hired to carry their baby is a psycho.

See what Paul Verhoeven has to say on Thomas Crown 2 below.