It looks like Spielberg’s Lincoln won’t even get to theaters (where he’d probably be shot anyway)…

Here’s a summation in the briefest terms possible.

Steven Speilberg was at Paramount with his production company, Dreamworks. Things between DreamWorks and Paramount’s chief Brad Grey didn’t go well, so Spielberg jumped ship with DreamWorks and bought the rights to 17 films with $13 million of Steven’s money. He hoped to start a new DreamWorks and found investors in Dubai in Reliant . Paramount and DreamWorks split, but DreamWorks left some projects behind at Paramount where they would be developed with Speilberg onboard (Transformers, Licoln among them).

Spielberg went to Universal where he set up a six-year distribution deal with his newly-free DreamWorks. However, the economy imploded on itself and funding from Reliant and Universal didn’t look like it would be enough, forcing DreamWorks to drop a few films and start secretly talking to Disney when Universal balked at upping the price on DreamWorks films. Universal eventually found out and severed it’s deal with DreamWorks, sending Spielberg and DreamWorks to the Mouse House.

However, Spielberg still had a deal with Universal and their themeparks, so the Disney deal included a clause that Disney couldn’t make attractions out of DreamWorks property, which gets a little confusing, but didn’t stop Disney from asking if Liam Neeson (attached to play Lincoln in Spielberg’s version) would voice the re-vamping of their anamatronic Lincoln in Florida.

To make things more complicated, Spielberg wanted his Lincoln movie to come out by the end of this year, the dead President’s 200th birthday. That means Lincoln would have to start in a few weeks.

Which brings us to Slate:

Spielberg has been developing the project for years and now hopes to start filming within weeks. But DreamWorks’ money troubles have cost him. This past weekend, he’s been waiting for executives at Paramount—the studio he ditched last year—to decide whether to make the film and hire him to direct it. (Update: A knowledgeable source told me on Wednesday that Paramount has passed on Lincoln.)

So there you go. See how many ways movies can be unmade?