In a very unusual move, Sony Pictures has cancelled production on the $60 million Steven Soderbergh pic Moneyball, even though it was due to begin filming today. The movie, which was due to star Brad Pitt, was put in ‘limited turnaround’ on Friday, which means that Soderbergh has just a few days to try and set the project up with another studio. If Soderbergh can’t set the movie up elsewhere by today, Sony can look at replacing the director (assuming Pitt wouldn’t walk as well) or delaying the film until everyone’s happy.
The problem apparently stems from a revised version of the script, which Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal disliked so much that she felt the need to apply the breaks before the studio spent more money of the project. Although it’s a very unusual step for a studio to step away from a picture with someone like Pitt attached (although Brad did something very similar with State Of Play, leaving the project when he saw the final script), it’s believed Pascal was uncomfortable with the amount of talking heads in the film.
The movie, based of the book by Michael Lewis, tells the story of how the Oakland A’s baseball team manager, Billy Bean, who used an unsual statistics system to build America’s cheapest and best baseball team. The film version doesn’t folow a traditional narrative and was going to feature interviews with real figures from the world of baseball. However the final script, which incorporated bits of the interviews that have already taken place, seems to have given Sony pause for thought.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.