Due to scheduling conflicts, Kevin Costner has dropped out of Quentin Tarantino‘s upcoming spaghetti-western-sex-slave-revenge film, Django Unchained. And while “scheduling conflicts” is often Hollywood code for “I didn’t get enough money,” Costner is indeed busy with the strongly anticipated Superman reboot, a film based on the Hatfields and the McCoys, and his own directorial project, A Little War Of Our Own.

As we noted earlier, Costner was an important part of the Tarantino recipe, allowing an iconic actor with a wholesome, all-American image to shock audiences with a bloody, intense role. Costner was slated to play Ace Woody, a slave driver in the pre-Civil War South who trains slaves to fight and kill each other for the entertainment of the masters.

But all hope is not lost: the role could feasible be taken by wholesome, all-American Gerald “Major Dad” McRaney, who is officially in talks to join the film. (Yes, I know he played a sociopath on Deadwood, but even that wasn’t enough to change his image in my mind.)

Also, Samuel L. Jackson has officially signed on, which (while not surprising) goes a long way in badass casting. Jackson, who is almost synonymous with a certain brand of lone wolf black power, will actually be playing the “house slave and right-hand-man to sadistic slave master Calvin Candie” (Leonardo DiCaprio). Then again, if anyone can make that character seem powerful and self-realized, it’s Jackson.

The film also stars Jamie Foxx as Django, an escaped slave returning to save his wife, and Christoph Waltz as his bounty hunter mentor.

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