Tales from Development Hell: “Moneyball”

GITS has been around long enough now so that some of the projects stuck in Development Hell are actually emerging into the light. An interesting one is the movie Moneyball. I covered some of its more interesting moments in development here:

“I’ve wanted to work with Steven forever, because he’s simply a great filmmaker,” Pascal told me today. “But the draft he turned in wasn’t at all what we’d signed up for. He wanted to make a dramatic reenactment of events with real people playing themselves. I’d still work with Steven in a minute, but in terms of this project, he wanted to do the film in a different way than we did.”

That’s Sony chief Amy Pascal in comments to Patrick Goldstein about the crash-and-burn of “Moneyball” in the Big Picture yesterday. The “Steven” in question is Steven Soderbergh. As was posted here last Friday, some strange stuff went down re this project:

So, to recap, Zaillian’s original script was so good that it made Sony want — nay — need to spend $57 million on a film about baseball statistics, even though such a movie would have limited appeal overseas (and anyone else wary of sitting through a movie about baseball statistics). Then, a week before shooting was to begin — with cameras and catering vans already on their way! — Soderbergh himself turned in a revised version that was so odious it made Amy Pascal completely reverse her earlier decision, likely forfeiting the $10 million Sony had already spent on preproduction. So how bad must Soderbergh’s new draft have been? Surely it’s worth somebody’s $57 million to find out, right?

And here:

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 blanched 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.

And now here we are a few years later and voila — a trailer for Moneyball appears:

This version is a straight ahead underdog sports movie, nothing unconventional about it whatsoever, and seemingly far removed from Sodebergh’s draft.

For more on that, you can check out Mystery Man’s posts on the project in which he actually compares the Soderbergh draft to the Zaillian draft of the script.

[And speaking of Mystery Man, any more conspiracy theories floating around out there?]

What do you think of the trailer? Hit movie? Not so much?

BTW the credited screenwriters are Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin.

The movie is slated for a fall release.
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