When Flashmob was announced, it seemed like an eccentric idea for Michael Haneke to take on. A drama about a group of online characters brought together by a flashmob wasn’t what you’d expect from the director of The White Ribbon and Amour.

It’s perhaps somewhat inevitable then that the Oscar-winning auteur has decided to can the project before production started. Haneke had previously said that he was waiting for an unnamed actress to be available and he was “waiting in line” until that moment. It’s not known whether this was the reason why he dropped the film.

“I had a project under preparation but I abandoned it for several reasons which I will not discuss,” he said to Le Parisien. Haneke is now researching for a different film in Paris and has yet to confirm any more details.

His last film Amour became his most commercially successful to date and won him the Oscar for best foreign language film. It was released in 2012, three years after his previous film The White Ribbon. By the time his next film is released, it will be the biggest gap between his work since 1997’s Funny Games.