They’re in the Money: Steven Soderbergh is moving closer to directing Moneyball, the adaptation of Michael Lewis’s classic baseball book about the highly influential sabremetric techniques of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane; Brad Pitt is also interested in the project. There is a downside, though — this means the batshit, insane 3-D Cleopatra musical Soderbergh was planning to direct is on hold. [Variety]
More Sex: The Sex and the City sequel has been extra-super-duper confirmed, we guess: The trades are reporting that all four principal actresses, plus director Michael Patrick King, are officially onboard. There is no script written or start date scheduled, but New Line president Toby Emmerich is determined to not let minor details like that prevent him from releasing this thing in the summer of 2010. [Variety]
Semen Jokes: Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman are signed on for The Baster, a comedy based on a Jeffrey Eugenides short story originally published in The New Yorker. Aniston plays a woman trying to get pregnant via artificial insemination, and Bateman is her best friend who secretly switches the donor semen with his own and “is then forced to live with the secret that he is the child’s real father.†Remind us again what exactly is funny about that? [Variety]
Bible Stories: Camilla Belle will step into some big shoes as the title character in MGM’s Mary, Mother of Christ; Al Pacino and Jessica Lange may join her, as Herod and Anna the Prophetess, respectively. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is already onboard as both Gabriel and Lucifer, as is Peter O’Toole, who will play Symeon. Sorry, is this from the before or after dinner part of Passover? [HR]
The Knife Refuses to Stop Being Weird: The next album from the Knife, the Swedish electropop brother-sister duo that likes to wear creepy bird masks in their promo photos and almost never talks to the media, will most likely be the score to their upcoming Charles Darwin opera, Tomorrow, in a Year. Of course. [Billboard]