Moneyball cont’d: “Getting pregnant”

This happened a few weeks back, but worth noting: “Sony still game for ‘Moneyball’”:

Sony is still game on making the baseball pic “Moneyball,” tapping Aaron Sorkin to polish an early script by Steve Zaillian.

Brad Pitt is still attached to star in Columbia Pictures’ adaptation of Michael Lewis’ nonfiction bestseller “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” but Steven Soderbergh will no longer direct the pic.

But Sony is keeping hold of the project, and Sorkin’s changes will be more in line with the version the studio favored all along, with the focus on Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who assembled a contending baseball club on a shoestring budget by employing a sophisticated computer-based analysis to draft players.

We’ve posted on this project here and here — and it’s an interesting example of what happens when a studio “get pregnant.” What that means is the further along the studio gets with a project — specifically re dollars spent — the more likely they are to have to actually produce it. Sony reportedly already has spent nearly $15M on Moneyball — and that represents being very pregnant.

So they blanced at Soderbergh’s draft, found out that Brad Pitt would still be interested in the project of Soderbergh departed, put in a call to Aaron Sorkin’s reps, found out he’d be interested in writing the script per Sony’s wishes, and last but not least looked at how much money they’d already invested in the project, leaving them this choice: Eat $15M or roll the dice with A-level talent actor and writer to see if they could at least recoup their investment and at best hit a home run.

More to come.