In completely unsurprising news, Paramount and Warner Bros. have both passed on Steven Soderbergh’s orphaned Moneyball movie, reports the L.A. Times. This comes after Sony torpedoed the baseball-statistics film on Friday, giving Soderbergh just three days to find it (and its $57 million budget) a new studio home. The paper also confirms that it was Soderbergh’s updated draft of the original script (written by Steven Zaillian), which Sony chairman Amy Pascal found “unacceptable†— plus, to a lesser degree, the director’s insistence on shooting Moneyball in an “improvisational documentary style†— that set off alarms.
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?
’Moneyball’ can’t find a place in Hollywood’s lineup [Company Town/LAT]
Earlier: Sony Chairman Realizes at the Last Minute That She’d Accidentally Greenlit a Moneyball Movie