Steven Soderbergh’s “Moneyball” getting benched is still the story of the day as far as we’re concerned and if you look around the web that still seems to be the case. There’s a lot of shock out there that a relatively cheap picture ($57 million) with Brad Pitt can get shitcanned at the last minute (Maybe the fact that “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” barely turned a profit was a glaring reminder to Amy Pascal that not everything Pitt stars in is bulletproof; there seems to be a lot of skepticism out there, including ours, about whether he can make “Inglourious Basterds” really kill at the box-office).
We started reading the Steve Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) December 2008 version of the “Moneyball” script last night. It’s sharp, a relatively fast read especially for folks like us who don’t follow baseball [ed. or at least I sure don’t]. The baseball stats element don’t feel thick or, pardon me, inside-baseballer-ish, and Pitt’s brash, let’s-not-fuck-around Billy Beane character is really amusing. He’s no-nonsense, all business with cool cucumber demeanor given to quick outbursts of anger. Got to love a character that moves with purpose and therefore injects an immediacy and drive to a story motor.
The stats guru Yale kid that was to be played by Demetri Martin feels like a strong fit for him too. You can imagine these guys in the roles instantly.
Now we gotta wonder –bearing in mind we haven’t finished the script– how much did Soderbergh, who supposedly rewrote a lot of the script, change? But careful, a lot of reports are extrapolating things not in the original trade pieces. Is it radically different? One would assume the most recent version of “Moneyball,” will leak today since studio execs are surely passing it along out of curiosity now, no? We have the old version and would love the newer one if you got it. We’ll trade you (not that you need the old version if you have enough pull to score the updated version. Email us if you got it. Holla. Super curious here.