With star Brad Pitt still attached and director Steven Soderbergh out for the count, Sony is still ready to play ball, hiring The West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin to rewrite Steven Zailian’s earlier draft, according to an update in Variety.
This film, which was set to begin shooting only a couple of weeks back but was then shut down days before the first day by studio head Amy Pascal, is based on Michael Lewis’ non-fiction Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which examines how Major League Baseball franchises with small salary caps (the Oakland Athletics primarily) focus on the statistics of players that are off the beat-and-path, suggesting continuing productivity rather than simple RBIs or home run amounts.
This whole film has been a curious endeavor – an all-around A-list adaptation of a book about baseball statistics. Literally, that’s what the book’s about. I have considerable doubts about the marketing value of such a property, but, who knows, baseball is still (barely) America’s pastime.
What do you think of Moneyball? And its future as a film?