You’d think that after the fiasco that was the “Moneyball” film, with its Steven Soderbergh helmed production (and Brad Pitt lead) shut-down three days before it was about to start and subsequent heaps of negative press, that Hollywood (or Sony in this case), might just want to walk away from this one, count their losses and call it a day.
But movement persists on “Moneyball,” and about two months after Aaron Sorkin delivered his version of the script (we’re getting to that). A source close to this project tells us Sony is interested in Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Bennett Miller (“Capote”) to direct the new version of the project and his interest seems to be reciprocal.
It’s still early, but it appears that tails are wagging and butts are being sniffed. Whether that turns into a full-blown movie or not remains to be seen, but interest is there. Miller is an odd choice for this one. We’re not really sure what to think honestly and are going to need a minute to digest.
Secondly, we’re also hearing that Sorkin’s “Moneyball” draft is more of a comedy?? Err, yeah, that’s what we’re hearing, seriously. We’re hoping that that means “comedy” in the same loose way Kevin Spacey insists that “The Social Network” script — also written by Sorkin — is a lot funnier than you think. But c’mon Mr. Spacey, we’ve read the script too and unless it’s been radically changed, it’s not a comedy (though sure, like any drama, it has its moments of humor and levity).
We’re not sure what to think of any of this, but we’re kind of dismayed and perplexed. We would assume Brad Pitt won’t be onboard for any “Moneyball” take two film, but maybe Demetri Martin might get recast? He was always an inspired choice for that role. Or, you know… the whole thing could just quietly go away and nobody would notice, but it seems that Sony still wants to recoup the $15 million they already spent on the original version.
Meanwhile, Soderbergh has talked about yet another, totally different post-baseball drama that he’d like to tackle and would need some amount of Major League Baseball approval from — some of our readers have made salient speculations, such sas a story based on post-baseball disasters like Lenny Dykstra — but we’ve heard either way that if this separate baseball-related project ever happened it would be a ways off (and seems to be more an inchoate idea more than anything at this point).
Update: RiskyBiz confirms our report and are basically hearing the same thing: “Moneyball” is moving forward and Miller is one of the key players the studio is looking at. They also add that “(500) Days Of Summer” director Marc Webb is in contention for the gig as well and or under consideration. But much to our surprise, Brad Pitt is still involved. They also note that everything is in the talking stage at this point, but as we said, Sony is looking to get this picture back on track.
Update 2: We’re told Marc Webb is old intel, probably not going to happen for various reasons. We’re also told Richard Linklater was offered this almost immediately after the aforementioned fiasco, but turned it down flat (you might be able to surmise why).