Soderbergh's 'Moneyball' Strikes Out

Steven Soderbergh's highly anticipated next film, the baseball bio-pic, Moneyball, has been put into "limited turnaround" by Columbia, days before shooting was set to begin in Phoenix. At issue is the script as revised by Steve Zallian and Soderbergh that troubled Columbia's Amy Pascal. It is believed that Soderbergh was veering too far from a traditional narrative, a lot more common with sports movies than some of the ambitious steps he wanted to take. We had heard there would be an animated character and Variety reports the director has shot interviews with real baseball players that would be interspersed throughout the film. The big surprise is that Columbia had the movie on a $50 million budget...and it had Brad Pitt. Still, Pascal didn't like what she read, so a weekend before production was set to begin, she showed Soderbergh the door. He can now take it across the street, but at the very least, the film will be delayed a while. Maybe he can work out a deal in the next week or so, but even modestly budgeted pictures don't generally fly through that quickly, and if the script worried Columbia, it could worry other studios, as well. The $50 million budget isn't a speed bump for the major players, but the design Soderbergh has in mind is more in the Fox Searchlight/Focus flavor, and it's probably too expensive for them. Moneyball is the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), who found a new way to evaluate talent as General Manager of the smaller market Oakland Athletics, allowing his team to stay very competitive with the Yankees, Red Sox, and other organizations with deeper pockets. In a way, the story is as unconventional as the screenplay. That concept could work in baseball but not in Hollywood. There's some irony for you.

Comments

[knives]

So he basically wanted to make Confessions of a Dangerous Mind for baseball?
Soderbergh's movies almost always make money so I just have to eye roll at this woman.