Studio balks at Soderbergh’s Moneyball

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Wow, here’s a sobering thought: Even Brad Pitt doesn’t get everything he wants. And if you are an aspiring filmmaker/writer/artist, avert your eyes now. As LSU’s baseball team guns for a national championship this week in Omaha, Oscar-winning director and former Baton Rougean Steven Soderbergh’s new baseball-themed film, Moneyball, may be striking out with its studio. Moneyball is/was to star Soderbergh’s Ocean’s buddy Pitt, but Columbia Pictures executive Amy Pascal halted production of the $57 million feature just three days before shooting was scheduled to begin this week in New Mexico.

The film is based on Michael Lewis’ 2003 non-fiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which focuses on Major League Baseball’s Oakland A’s and team manager Billy Beane’s unique methods of staying competitive with the big boys like the Yankees as a cash-envious, small-market ball club. Schlinder’s List and 2007’s All the King’s Men scribe Steven Zaillian adapted the screenplay with Soderbergh, and Pitt signed on to play Beane. All good, right? Wrong.

Apparently if there’s no love story, and no discernable villains, studios don’t like to spend more than $10 million or so on a film. At last count, Soderbergh’s certainly quirky and creative adaptation of Lewis’ not-so-cinematic book, hit the $57 million mark, a budget that would probably be too high — even with Pitt starring — in the middle of an economic boom. But with California all but bankrupt and Hollywood reeling from the recession, it’s no shock to see Moneyball get the clampdown. It’s just a shame smaller, more unique films have to suffer more when cutbacks are made. But even big cheesy summer movies are feeling the heat of the recession.

Director Michael Bay has been royally ticked about Paramount’s efforts to promote his Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. In an e-mail from Bay to Paramount executives in May, and obtained by TMZ, the director wrote, “I have been waiting and waiting for the anticipation of an ‘event movie’ to make it into the ‘public zeitgeist,’” which is a funny complaint because whenever I saw all the fast food packaging with giant robots on it, and the countless print ads, TV spots and stupid pop-ups on my computer, I never once thought ‘Man, I wish this stuff looked more zietgeisty.’ Bay then went on to call the entire print campaign an “abject failure,” and deplored the film’s visibility at the MTV Movie Awards as “so lame.” Or maybe that was Bay’s review of the awards show altogether.

Maybe Columbia wants Soderbergh and Zaillian to rework Moneyball without animating A’s stats guru Bill James. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Soderbergh announced the film would feature a traditionally animated character in real settings. Yes, like Roger Rabbit. “It needs a gimmick,” Soderbergh announced in May. “It needs something to make it not Masterpiece Theatre. His writer voice is so big, I thought to literalize it is going to actually harm it. I need to make his voice funny and when he comes on you’re happy to see it.” Forget $57 million, that is taking a risk! And, of course, I’m dying to see if he pulls it off.

Maybe the studio wants to add a ridiculous Jose Canseco steroids subplot or have Pitt’s Beane fall for the long-suffering concession stand worker and single mother played by Jennifer Lopez. Who knows. Me, I hope Soderbergh sticks to his guns, and his script, and either finds a new studio to finance the picture, or makes Pascal realize the latest script is the best one for the project. Still, even if Moneyball never happens, and Hollywood goes further in the tank with ever-shrinking budgets, there is no better director for making small indie films into masterpieces than Steven Soderbergh. He’s a filmmaker who can easily ride out this recession.