Hey, remember Moneyball? How could you not? The film meant to be directed by Steven Soderbergh, which was famously shut down at the eleventh hour by Sony chief Amy Pascal, is still going forward. Bennett Miller is directing from a new script by Aaron Sorkin. Original star Brad Pitt remains part of the equation (which seems miraculous) but his co-star has changed. No longer will Demetri Martin play the young statistician that helps Oakland A’s manager make baseball history. Now it will be Jonah Hill.
ESPN has the news about Hill. Columnist Rob Neyer says he talked to Michael Lewis, author of the source book Moneyball: The Art to Winning an Unfair Game, who gave up the info that Martin was out and Hill is in. Rumors of the trade have been circulating for a week or so, but this is the first printed confirmation I’ve seen. That it comes from Lewis, rather than one of the film’s producers, is interesting, but I don’t think that makes it any less legit.
Jonah Hill will play Paul DePodesta, a Harvard grad who skipped over Wall St. jobs and instead went to work for A’s manager Billy Beane. The duo put DePodesta’s ‘Earned Run Value’ statistical system to work and built a winning team for peanuts.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Tristan.

From an interview with the real Billy Beane.

Billy Beane on Money Ball & Brad Pitt – I asked Billy if he was happy that the “Money Ball” movie got picked up by another production company. He said that it’s great that the movie is going to be made after all. I then asked him how he felt about someone like Brat Pitt to be playing his character. Billy laughing a little said that it would be much more exciting if he was 25 and single! He also said that Brad Pitt came over to visit his Danville home. Telling me that both his nanny who is a very casual dresser and wife got all made up when he came over. He thought it was very funny that his wife got up at 6am to get ready for Brad’s visit. I then asked if Angelina came with Brad and he said that unfortunately she didn’t. I bet if Angelina came over Billy would have been up at 6am getting ready! Lol

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Bennett Miller is in negotiations to direct Columbia’s “Moneyball,” the on-again, off-again baseball drama starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s who rewrote the unwritten rulebook of baseball.

The move comes after Columbia, the actor and the producers — Michael De Luca, Scott Rudin and Rachael Horovitz — met with directors in recent weeks to get the movie back on track after pulling the plug on a Steven Soderbergh-directed iteration in June. The movie began its rehabilitation with when Aaron Sorkin was brought on to write a draft, drawing on Steve Zaillian’s earlier take.

The project is based upon the best-selling book by Michael Lewis. Stan Chervin wrote the first draft of the script.

Columbia’s Matt Tolmach and Jonathan Kadin are overseeing.

CAA-repped Miller is best known for directing “Capote,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. The movie earned Hoffman an Oscar and also netted a nomination for best picture.

Source/discuss.

Moneyball was almost dead after the arguments between Steven Soderbergh and the producers. Now with the introduction of Bennett Miller it seems to be taking off. The film was said to star Brad Pitt in the lead but it closed down production couple of days into it.

Now there is another script doing the works after Aaron Sorkin did his penmanship to it. It is has been getting a lot of good buzz with Sony wanting Academy nominated filmmaker Bennett Miller to take up the reigns from Steven Soderbergh.

Another thing that has been cropping up is the fact that the new script is a comedy. There is surely not going to be the presence of Brad Pitt in this one. He might join Steven Soderbergh on another major league baseball film.

There is also news that Marc Webb might also be in contention to do this project. I guess it is a case of too much speculation which might work against its favor.

Source. I don’t know how reliable this information is.

Moneyball still isn’t dead yet. Aaron Sorkin has been working on a new draft of the script since Steven Soderbergh was essentially booted a few months ago, but the film still needs a director. And that’s where Capote’s Bennett Miller and Marc Webb, director of (500) Days of Summer, might come into the picture. They’re on the list of a few guys that Sony has been talking to as possible new helmers for the film, which surprisingly still has Brad Pitt attached to star. The question is, who’ll get the job?

Read more. Thanks SDR.

A few months ago, it was one of the most talked about projects in Hollywood. Then “Moneyball” fell prey to script conflicts, a studio that pulled the plug days before cameras were to start rolling and a world-class director — Steven Soderbergh — who quit in protest. Since then, the smoke and noise seems to have faded, along with the film itself.

But Brad Pitt is still convinced that he’ll soon suit up and play ball.

“My gut says yes,” the star said of “Moneyball” on Monday, when we caught up with him on the red carpet at the premiere of his August 21st Quentin Tarantino flick “Inglourious Basterds.”

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Production on “Moneyball” was set to start last month but studio topper Amy Pascal wound up pulling the plug on the pic just days before lensing was to begin when Soderbergh turned in a new version of the script that the studio didn’t want to make.

Pic was put into limited turnaround at the time, giving other studios the chance to pick it up.

But Sony is keeping hold of the project, and Sorkin’s changes will be more in line with the version the studio favored all along, which focuses on Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who assembled a contending baseball club on a shoestring budget by employing a sophisticated computer-based analysis to draft players.

Soderbergh’s draft and production plans took a more documentary approach that the studio felt wouldn’t cross over commercially with moviegoers.

Sorkin is expected to be completed with his revamp by August.

Read more. Thanks SDR.

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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