Soderbergh's 'Moneyball' Strikes Out...Again

Over the weekend, Sony pitched a curveball to Stephen Soderbergh's Moneyball, a more ambitious sports movie than we're used to. The timing was dubious; Soderbergh was literally three days from shooting the movie when the studio's Amy Pascal made the move. Even more strange was that the film had Brad Pitt attached, and at this point in his career, Pitt is as safe a bet as he's ever been. Sony left the door open for Soderbergh to find another studio for the film, and The Los Angeles Times reports today that both Warner Bros. and Paramount have passed on the $50 million flick. The problem, outside of a downward trajectory in the performance of medium budget dramas and the fear that the behind-the-scenes baseball movie won't catch fire overseas, is Soderbergh's vision for the project. Sony hated it. Warner and Paramount also, apparently, aren't interested in having Chuck Woolery pay for a second date. There's also some studio whispers that point the finger at Pitt for jumping ship on the project, and Pascal took the fall for it. That wouldn't be new; Pitt balked at the script revisions for State of Play last year. That's not confirmed and, of course, it never would be. It's hard to think that Soderbergh would blindly go down some truly bizarre alley on a Brad Pitt movie without involving him earlier than the shooting script, though.They do have a history, and with Pitt's own stubbornness about his projects (remember how much he hated doing The Devil's Own?), I can't completely buy that Soderbergh would spring this on him and that Pitt was on Team Pascal once he read the revisions. The Times says that Sony is still out about $10 million, costs incurred during the development and pre-production stages, but since estimates were that Moneyball would have to make $100 million or more in the U.S. to break even, that $10 million seems like the lesser of two evils. Will the movie get made? Not as it's currently written, and you can bet if Soderbergh doesn't alter his version it will never get made. If the screenplay survives with another director, I think you can probably count out Pitt, as well.