'Moneyball' Confirmed For A July Start Date

Deadline Hollywood has confirmed what Jonah Hill told The Playlist first, last month at the SXSW Film Festival: the long-delayed baseball sabermetrics film, “Moneyball” will shoot this summer in July.

Frankly, we’re kind of shocked. If we wrote up every little piece of dirt we had heard about the maligned-“Moneyball” project we would have had about five or six stories on the site dealing with the minutia of its problems, but like everything in Hollywood: things ebb, flow, fluctuate and change.

As previously reported, the film will be directed by Bennett Miller (“Capote”) and will star Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill as Billy Beane and Paul De Podesta, respectively, the GM and assistant GM that made the 2002 Oakland A’s highly competitive (he took them to a AL West Division title) using the aforementioned modern analytical sabermetrics system, despite having a completely budgeted, lo-rent team.

Deadline reports that the film is close to getting its green light which is almost comical because we heard less than a week ago that the project was falling apart. That’s not us dogging Deadline and or knocking our own sources and it’s more an indication of a project that has flipped and flopped all over the place.

Some may think we have it in for this project, but we’re actually quite happy about it and here’s why: we just read — and we’re betting we’re one of the few films sites that has read it — Aaron Sorkin’s draft of “Moneyball” and here’s something you might not believe. Despite being rejected several times, reportedly by Pitt and Bennett, it’s rather great and yes, ready to go and be green lit. Of course it’s essentially Steve Zaillian’s original draft with a lot more humor (and yes, buddy humor, but a “comedy” might be a bit of an overstatement), but it’s great, really funny (we can see Pitt and Hill playing off each other well) and should be shot.

The “Moneyball” budget was once in the $60 million ballpark, but Deadline says it has now been shaved down to the $47 million mark and that’s likely because Pitt is finally going to adjust his deal (when Steven Soderbergh was on the project, Pitt drastically reduced his salary to under $10 million for his friend, when that project got axed his priced jumped back up to his $15 million dollar fee, but according to this report, it sounds like they’ve finally got him to come around).

Deadline even references our report that Brad Pitt could star in “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” which Sony denies because there is no script yet, which is true, but Zaillian is writing it, will likely deliver it in the next month or so, and it is being eyed for an October shoot (we’re told by sources close that project that they’re even close to locking a production shoot day which we assume would be late to mid October when David Fincher, the director, is finished with press for “The Social Network”). So don’t rule Pitt’s involvement in ‘Tattoo” out so fast — though it is a good way to deny something when you can claim, “hey, there’s no script” which is technically true.

Apparently Bennett Miller is hoping to fill out the rest of the cast soon. We’re sure we’ll hear more soon, but just remember even Deadline notes that the project does not have a green light yet… and of course Pitt is notoriously gunshy and likes to bail on projects last minute (see “State Of Play”).

In case you’re living under a rock, “Moneyball” was one of 2009’s most controversial non-productions. Steven Soderbergh was supposed to shoot the film in June, but Sony PicturesAmy Pascal pulled the plug three days before the cameras were set to roll, because she didn’t love his version of the script (or at least that’s been one excuse, as was the alleged fact that the MLB had not approved certain versions of the script; we’ve spent months talking to several people attempting to sort it all out, and it’s a bit of a deep throat clusterfuck to tell you the truth). In that version, comedian Demetri Martin was supposed to play the geeky Paul DePodesta (and he certainly looks like him).

Hill told us he was extremely happy to get the “Moneyball” role last month because not only would he be working with Miller and Pitt, he beat out some high profile actors for the role, one of them being his bff, Jason Schwartzman.