New MONEYBALL director found, Pitt still attached

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Brad Pitt is either the laziest actor in Hollywood, is humouring Columbia for a little while or he really, really likes the idea of starring in the baseball movie Moneyball, which it's been announced by Variety has finally found a new director in the form of Bennett Miller (Capote). Amazingly, Pitt is still attached to the movie despite the director he signed on board to work with, Stephen Soderbergh, being kicked off the 96 hours short of filming when Columbia Pictures head Amy Pascal suddenly realised she had greenlight a $65 million movie about baseball statistics, and panicked over it's potential profits. Pitt is still attached to play Oakland A€™s manager Billy Beane, who assembled a contending baseball club on a small budget by employing a sophisticated computer-based analysis to draft players Pascal gave Soderbergh/Pitt a weekend to find another studio who would finance their take on the picture but instead Soderbergh just walked off, and we all expected Pitt to follow suit, but several months have passed since and his name is still attached. At this point, it looks like he's actually going to make it. Over the summer, Soderbergh spent at least $10 million on pre-production for his take on the adaptation of Michael Lewis' non fiction book, going so as to interview various real life sporting athletes, in an attempt to blur the fiction/reality, athlete/actor barrier for the film. These interviews were to be inter-spread over Soderbergh's narrative. Soderbergh take was a semi-improvisational (ala The Girlfriend Experience) thinking man's film (as it's mostly about stats/economy), and not the conventional, uplifting, Bull Durham sports movie, filled with several moments of comedy that Pascal wanted, and thought she had originally greenlit from previous writer Steve Zallian. The new synopsis, after a couple of further re-writes, one from Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War) suggests this is still the case...

Real-life story is based on Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who defied conventional wisdom and even his own scouts by fielding a baseball team of castoffs to create the ultimate underdogs en route to one of the most unlikely winning streaks in the history of professional sports.

"ultimate underdogs, winning streaks"... yeah we know how this movie is going. Before filming begins, a new draft is expected to try and bring down that $65 million budget. Of course an easy way to do that for Columbia is to fire Brad Pitt and find someone cheaper, though I still think he might bail on this one. He is notorious for leaving budgets in the lurch when he is unhappy with how they have been developed (State of Play and The Fountain most recently) but what's taking him so long this time?