Pitt/Soderbergh's baseball movie in trouble after Columbia take their eye off the MONEYBALL
Columbia studio head Amy Pascal suddenly got very nervous on Friday for Moneyball, the adaptation of the bestselling Michael Lewis non-fiction baseball novel when the latest re-draft from Steve Zaillian (American Gangster, Schlinder's List) and director Stephen Soderbergh wasn't to her liking and was radically different from what she originally greenlit back in October. Pascal has given has given the pair until today (Monday) to find a new studio if they want to make the film as written. Otherwise Pascal will either replace Soderbergh/Zaillian with someone else (Devil Wears Prada helmer David Frankel was previously attached to direct) and potentially risk Brad Pitt walking out or Columbia will put the project in indefinitve turnaround. This is clearly a last minute panic as production was set to begin today in Phoenix. Warner Bros. and Paramount are said to be interested according to Variety, and really it's no surprise. The novel is a clear audience favourite and although the concept possibly sounds difficult for an easy adaptation (movie is about Oakland As manager Billy Beane, who assembled a contending baseball club on a small budget by employing a sophisticated computer-based analysis to draft players), Soderbergh has delivered proven audience hits (The Ocean's movies) and of course has the real Moneyball in his pocket... Brad Pitt. The real ironic thing in all this is that this time last year the shoe was on the other foot when Brad Pitt dropped out of State of Play for the same kind of reasons. It has to be said though, it's unusual for a studio to pull out of a project when it was less than 100 hours before filming was to begin and has a mega star like Pitt attached. Sign of the times of diminished star power mixed with the ongoing recession? The budget of $57 million is a big piece of Columbia pie, even with Pitt attached and looking at the history of the baseball genre... only three movies have surpassed that figure enough to say the project was worthwhile domestically. Even Field of Dreams only made $64 million worldwide. If the decision is today, I guess we will find out very soon what the future of the project is. If the project is put into indefinite turnaround, then Pitt's got the exciting sounding The Lost City of Z and Soderbergh has a Liberace biopic with Michael Douglas ready in waiting.