Trick question. How many ups and downs, restarts and resets can one Hollywood project have before it self-implodes? Or wait, how many screenwriters in Tinseltown does it take to pen a sports drama about a winning baseball season the Oakland A’s had in 2003 thanks to a sabermetrics statistics measurement adopted by the team’s general manager Billy Beane and his untested Harvard grad assistant Paul DePodesta?
Yes, we’re talking “Moneyball” once again, a project that has become one of the more paroxysmal and convoluted ones to almost hit the screen in recent years.
Writers who have in some capacity taken some kind of a stab at adapting Michael Lewis’s 2003 book “Moneyball” include, Stan Chervin, Stephen J. Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson, Steven Zaillian (Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “Schindler’s List,” “American Gangster”), Steven Soderbergh and Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing,” “The Social Network”). Directors on the project have been David Frankel (“Marley & Me”), Steven Soderbergh and now Bennett Miller (“Capote”).
The project first took wings in early 2009 with the team of Zaillian and Soderbergh (a fine script and a fine director), but obviously fell apart last year, allegedly due to a rewrite by the “Ocean’s” director that purportedly displeased everyone involved. Then Sony pulled the plug (there’s been talk of MLB lack-of-approval as blame, but then that same element being simply a red herring).
Sorkin was then hired months later to rework the script, eventually getting it to a place we actually liked (though it was more or less Zaillian’s draft with more buddy comedy), but now, lo and behold according to Deadline, the original screenwriter Zaillian is back on board (Chervin, Rivele and Wilkinson wrote early drafts during the Frankel days that won’t likely get credit, they are so far removed).
But read Deadline’s full story. Something is not right. This picture shoots in July and the screenwriter — Sorkin, who we were told wrote up to five different drafts — has been replaced, sorry… been refitted by the original screenwriter? And Deadline’s curiously drama-free piece has no backstory? Sounds doubtful? That’s because it is — from what we’re hearing (nothing we want to report right now, but keep your ears peeled for more from others).
This smells like exactly what happened with “American Gangster.” Zaillian wrote that script, Antoine Fuqua tried to rewrite it (with Benicio del Toro starring instead of Russell Crowe) and it was so poor the project was killed (and expensive, the talent all had pay or play deals and the entire budget loomed over $100 million). Terry George (“Hotel Rwanda”) was then hired to write a draft, but it didn’t fly with the producers. Ridley Scott then got a hold of it and Zaillian was paid a seven-figure deal to rewrite the script he already wrote (yes, Hollywood loves to waste time and fucking money).
Rewrite or not, “Moneyball” is apparently still on track for its July shoot. The film still stars Brad Pitt as Beane, Jonah Hill as Podesta, plus Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Wright with Bennett Miller directing.
The other player of note is Scott Rudin. He’s the producer on “Moneyball” and “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” the script of which Zaillian just completed last week and its one piping hot commodity at the moment — Brad Pitt is circling the project which is being led by David Fincher, and practically every female in Hollywood wants the role of Lisbeth Salander (names like Carey Mulligan, Ellen Page, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, etc.). There’s a chance Zaillian could have used ‘Tattoo’ to throw his weight around with Rudin… or perhaps Sorkin just overwrote himself.