 Billy Beane |
 Brad Pitt |
 |
 Steven Soderbergh |
 Demetri Martin |
The actor/comedian has joined the team to play Paul dePodesta, a Harvard grad who’s forte with statistics and probabilities helps Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane (Pitt) develop a methodology to successfully compete against teams with deeper pockets.
Oscar-winning director Steve Soderbergh (“Traffic”) is directing from an adaptation of Michael Lewis’s popular non-fiction book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”. Moneyball is an insider account of the way Billy Beane assembled the 2002 Oakland Athletics, using the power of scouting and sabremetrics to overcome a distinct financial disadvantage. It worked…..for a while, as the A’s went 103-59 that year, winning the division but losing in the first round of the playoffs to the Minnesota Twins.
Michael Fleming of Variety reports that Steve Zaillian (“American Gangster”, “Schindler’s List”), is doing a polish on a script originated by Stan Chervin which Sony optioned in 2004.
First published by W. W. Norton in 2003, the story certainly fits the framework of the popular underdog theme often seen in sports pictures.
It will be interesting to see how they dramatize this
Love baseball movies, this one seems like it will be a different look at the sport. I welcome it.
The finances of baseball have an inertesting history in Oakland going back to the days of owner Charlie O Finley. They should make a film about the 70s A’s
Soderbergh and Pitt – that’s more like Hollywood’s version of the New York Yankees!