June
22
Moneyball Update
It was a bad week for Steven Soderbergh and his $57-million screen version of Michael Lewis's baseball book Moneyball, which Sony shut down as of Friday--with a Monday start-of-production date. (How odd that "producer" Michael DeLuca was on his honeymoon last week and still has not returned. Soderbergh's producer Greg Jacobs was in charge, clearly.) The problem with the Sony spin over the weekend is that it doesn't make sense for Sony chief Amy Pascal to be suddenly discovering that she didn't like a script that had been in circulation--and active pre-production for weeks. Soderbergh was open about his documentary-like approach, and had obtained Major League Baseball cooperation.
So the Brad Pitt theory-- that he got cold feet (not for the first time) and used Pascal as his beard-- makes more sense. But that is not what I'm hearing from Pitt's camp. They say he was ready to make Soderbergh's movie. It's hard to imagine Pitt agreeing to make the movie with another director at this point. It would have to be Soderbergh or no one. Pascal was demanding certain changes that Pitt and Soderbergh refused to make and threw her foot down, perfectly willing to walk away. Point is, she would have made the movie a year ago. She can't afford for this movie to lose money right now, bottom line.
Soderbergh had the weekend to line up another studio, but his bad luck was that Paramount was in disarray. And Warners passed. Either he makes some kind of rapprochement with Sony or the project's dead. Here's Michael Fleming. UPDATE: And the LAT.
[Graphic courtesy The Playlist]
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It's interesting the whisper campaign that Variety repeatedly tries against Pitt. You guys did it with SOP too. It was clear that he excercised his option with the script which was within his contractual right and yet Variety along with Universal tried to paint Pitt as the bad guy. When all he wanted was to wait for the writers strike to end. Well, it turns out he was correct and the film was garbage. Now, I see you're trying to do it again. I know Peter Bart's and old bitter fool but Thompson you're supposed to be better then that.
Posted by: Leah | June 22, 2009 at 05:10 PM
State of Play was actually a high-quality adaptation - certainly a film that Pitt is now probably regretting he wasn't involved in. When you drop out of a project less than a couple of days before it's scheduled to go into production, leaving crew and other actors completely in the lurch, how can he be anything other than 'the bad guy'? Of course he's not worried, he's a failing box-office draw that still rests easy on totally unwarranted $20 mill per film paychecks, but maybe he should stop weaseling out at the very last minute and at least give studios a chance to regroup.
As much as Variety love to spread around rumour and gossip (all the 'trades' present this kind of material as 'fact nowadays), Pitt's track record for pulling this shit speaks for itself. Backing out of 'The Fountain' was one of the lousiest things a Hollywood star could possibly do - you can't honestly suggest he only had the chance to read script changes at the last minute (i.e. few days before production officially kicked in - after millions were wasted on building sets, and nearly all the crew were waiting in Australia for him).
Posted by: Scott | June 23, 2009 at 04:42 AM
Don't twist the facts about The Fountain and/or State of Play. Both of those productions speak for themselves. They both BOMBED at the box office. And since when is Brad Pitt a box office failure? You cannot be serious? He's numbers over the course of his career speak for themselves. Pitt had final script approval for SOP. They had a full week after the strike ended to get changes made. He only did what the studio gave him the power to do. In the final analysis he was right and everyone else was wrong.
As far as The Fountain is concerned you probably need to go back and read the reality of what happened. That film was plagued from the beginning. It wasn't just Pitt who had concerns but BOTH studios involved even D.A. has admitted he was wrong.
Posted by: Sean | June 23, 2009 at 06:13 PM
Soderbergh brought the budget from 70 million (which she green lit) to 57. Soderbergh got Brad Pitt to reduce his fee and sign a deal (he had no deal in place prior..was attached but not firmly committed.)
Now making a 57 million $ Brad Pitt film is too risky because it's a 'baseball movie'? why was 70 not risky? Amy never had MLB approval for any draft of the script besides Soderbergh's.
Pitt will ankle and now she has to find a new star, hire new screenwriters and start over..
She's already into the movie for 14 million.
So if they get a no name or someone cheap to star is the hope the budget will be lower and less risky? So a 40 million dollar 'Moneyball' (dreaded **baseball movie) with a no name star, not so great director or script is somehow less risky than the 57 million dollar version with Brad? Plus she still has to eat that 14 million she's already spent. Makes no sense..My guess is she made an uniformed decision (not aware about MLB) and now she's stuck and is sticking to her decision because of her ego...only Sony stockholders pick up the 14 million dollar tab.
Posted by: Blake | June 27, 2009 at 05:56 PM