Brad Pitt must like author Michael Lewis. A few months ago he was all set to star in an adaptation of Lewis’ Moneyball, about the unsual statstical system used to turn the Oakland A’s baseball team into winners, but the Steven Soderbergh directed movie fell apart just days before production was due to begin, when Sony pulled the plug. Although Pitt may still make the picture, it’s currently being rewritten and overhauled, which means he might decide to pull out.
However it now appears that even if he doesn’t make Moneyball, he could star in an adaptation of Lewis’ upcoming book, The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine. According to Vulture, Pitt’s Plan B production company is said to be close to sealing a rights deal on the book, with an eye to turning it into a star vehicle for Brad.
The Big Short is a chronicle of Wall Street greed and the swollen US housing market, looking at the causes of the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse of the world’s ecnomies. Hopefully the film won’t just be Brad giving An Inconvenient Truth style lecture on the subject and there’s a meaty role in there somewhere for him.
Michael Lewis is hot in Hollywood at the moment, as despite the troubles with Moneyball, he’s currently riding high on the success of the Sandra Bullock starrer, The Blind Side, which was based on one of his book.