It’s never an easy decision when a studio head has to pull the plug on a big movie, as Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal did last week when she shut down “Moneyball,” a $58 million Steven Soderbergh film that was set to star Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the maverick general manager of the Oakland Athletics who almost single-handedly reinvented the way baseball scouts and develops young talent.

The movie, based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis, wasn’t just in preproduction — it was five days away from filming when Soderbergh turned in a new version of the script that Pascal and her Sony team found unacceptable. The decision was so abrupt that the film’s producer, Michael DeLuca, got the call about it while on his honeymoon in Paris. As a courtesy to the stars, Pascal gave them an opportunity to try and set the film up elsewhere, but no other studio has shown any interest. So the movie remains at Sony, but will it ever get made?

Although stories about the film’s abrupt demise have appeared everywhere — with Variety getting the original scoop — Pascal hasn’t talked about the decision until now. To hear her tell it, Soderbergh delivered a script that was inventive but a radical departure from the film Sony thought he was going to make. It was, put simply, more of a re-creation than a feature film.

“I’ve wanted to work with Steven forever because he’s simply a great filmmaker,” Pascal said last week. “But the draft he turned in wasn’t at all what we’d signed up for. He wanted to make a dramatic re-enactment of events with real people playing themselves. I’d still work with Steven in a minute, but in terms of this project, he wanted to do the film in a different way than we did.”

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It was claimed by some site a few weeks ago that Tarantino was cutting lots of time from IB. But this is what Harvey Weinstein has to say about that in the latest GQ:

“Those stories are all untrue. There’s no fu**ing way. Here, read my lips: That is nuts. Please don’t even write that, it’s insanity. There’s not even a question of that. Whatever you’re reading, it’s like some insane blogger… There’s no truth to any of this. He’s not gonna cut. What he’s doing is just reorganizing some scenes. I mean, the guy had six weeks to cut his movie [for Cannes]; most guys take six months. Most guys take a year.

When I worked with Martin [Scorsese], we’d do eighteen months in post-production. Quentin Tarantino cuts a movie in six weeks? Come on, there’s sh** on that cutting-room floor that’ll blow your brains out. I was telling Quentin the opposite-”You should put that sh** back in the movie.” There’s scenes with Brad Pitt and the Basterds, and I’m praying he puts that sh** back in, ‘cause it’s un-fu**ing-believably great. Listen-this movie will be between two hours and twenty minutes and two hours and twenty-seven minutes. I don’t think it’s going to be shorter-it’s just a question of rearranging. I know he’s putting footage back into the movie. I know he’s got some cool sh** that he didn’t get time to address.”

Source.

Time to back away from Moneyball for a while: the New York Times reports that Steven Soderbergh is totally off the project, only hours after the LA Times published an interview with Sony head Amy Pascal, who reiterated the studio’s reasons for bailing on the project. And both the Times and Movieline talked to Major League Baseball (MLB), which has been in the process of negotiating with Sony to approve the use of official logos and team names. The whole convoluted story is after the jump.

OK, so the original report was that Amy Pascal had scrapped the project only days before filming because Soderbergh had turned in a new draft that was a ‘radical departure’ from the previous one by Steve Zaillian. The problem, though, wasn’t that it was more crazy, but that it was too restrained. Zaillian’s draft had been more dramatic, more movie-like, and Soderbergh’s brought it back to reality. Perhaps too close to reality, as that’s what Pascal responded to. (What are the chances that Soderbergh’s draft went back to realism and the truth in order to ensure that MLB played along? Pretty good, though that might not be the only reason.) Read more.

Human Rights Watch said Friday that Zimbabwe’s armed forces have taken over diamond fields in the east and killed more than 200 people, forcing children to search for the precious gems and beating villagers who get in the way.

The New York-based organization said its call for a ban on diamonds from the region had received an endorsement from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. A statement from the couple’s foundation was expected later Friday.

“Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have issued a call for a ban on any sale or purchase of Marange diamonds … until … the mining is not based on the violent abuse of residents in that region,” said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director.

Zimbabwe’s deputy mining minister, Murisi Zwizwai, has denied the allegations and said the presence of the military is to secure the area.

More than 100 witnesses, miners, police officers, soldiers and children were interviewed for the report entitled “Diamonds in the Rough,” which details allegations of human rights abuses by Zimbabwean armed forces in an attempt to control access to the precious gems.

The human rights group said esearchers had gathered evidence of mass graves and accounts of an incident last year when military helicopters fired at miners, while armed soldiers on the ground chased villagers from the area. Read more.