It looks as if there may be trouble in Tarantino City. News reaches us that Sacha Baron Cohen and Kurt Russell have both dropped out of the director’s upcoming Django Unchained. The offbeat western stars Jamie Foxx as a freed slave wandering America who teams up with a bounty hunter, played by Tarantino discovery Christoph Waltz.

Russell recently took over the part of a brute who trains slaves to fight, from Kevin Costner. That role now looks to have something of a curse upon it. The latest changes seem to be the result of scheduling difficulties and nobody is suggesting that any arguments took place. So it would be a little premature to brandish the phrase “troubled production”.