Filmonic » Moneyball

Is It Really All About The $$$? Amy Pascal and Sony Gain Clooney, Ditch Soderbergh

Dave — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:39:56 +0000

In case you haven’t followed the ridiculous process of Amy Pascal of Sony and Columbia Tri-Star suddenly putting a full halt and turnaround on the baseball pic Moneyball, I direct you to post number one HERE and post number two HERE.

Now, we’re hearing the end of this argument and some details about what exactly went wrong with the script to make Pascal halt the $58 million dollar production mere days before the project began filming with Brad Pitt in the starring role. The word on the digital street was that the script that director Steven Soderbergh delivered was so tonally different from the Pascal-approved draft written by Schindler’s List scribe Steven Zaillian that she ground the movie to a halt. At that point, Sony had already pumped an estimated $10 million dollars into the development of the script.

What were the script details that caused Pascal to boot Soderbergh off the flick, and why is Sony so eager to save money on Brad Pitt films while risking money on George Clooney films?

The Big Picture LA Times Blog actually talked to Pascal about why Moneyball didn’t get started:

“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.”
Soderbergh’s last-minute revisions represented a huge change from the shooting script I read when I was working on a story about the film during its pre-production. The script, written by Oscar winner Steve Zaillian, was a baseball movie, but it was loaded with great comic moments and dazzling dialogue that captured the frenetic energy of Beane, a strikingly good-looking former phenom who washed out after a brief stint in the majors, only to resurface as a general manager who operated more like “Entourage’s” Ari Gold than the buttoned-down insiders who normally run big-league teams. Beane was a born hustler, always wheeling and dealing, staying one step ahead of his rivals as he scouted unlikely unknown minor leaguers to replace the high-priced free agents a small-market team like the Oakland A’s couldn’t afford.
Soderbergh wouldn’t talk to me about all this, but it seems clear that he became obsessed with authenticity, replacing many of Zaillian’s inspired scripted set-pieces with actual interviews with the real people who were involved in the events. The Soderbergh aesthetic, according to one source close to the film, was simple: If it didn’t happen in real life, it wasn’t going to be in the movie.

Summation: Steven Soderbergh went for an authentic re-telling of real-life events and Pascal wanted the Brad Pitt, A-List, possible Oscar nod movie she signed up for.

This would be an interesting creative vs. business argument if there wasn’t another side to the story: the Soderbergh-working-with-Major-League-Baseball side. In an interesting Left Coast/Right Coast bit of reporting dialogue, it was The New York Times that added the new piece of the puzzle:

One reason was to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which was not happy with some factual liberties in Mr. Zaillian’s version. Such approval is crucial in a baseball film that intends to use protected trademarks.
“Typically, on a film like this, we look at it for historical accuracy,” said Matthew Bourne, a vice president of Major League Baseball for public relations. “We’ve been in touch with Soderbergh and Sony, and they’ve been receptive to our requests.”
What baseball saw as accurate, Sony executives saw as being too much a documentary. Mr. Soderbergh, for instance, planned to film interviews with some of the people who were connected to the film’s story.
The executives, who had just seen disappointing results from “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” and “Year One,” rebelled. Ms. Pascal and Matt Tolmach, co-president of Sony’s film operation, personally told Mr. Soderbergh of their dissatisfaction.

Summation: In one corner we have Steven Soderbergh and Major League Baseball and in the other we have Sony, feeling the hurt of Year One and The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3 underperforming as DVD and home video sales decline.

I can understand not wanting to launch a $58 million dollar Brad Pitt film unless you’re damn sure that you will make your money back, but there’s one more piece of news that seems to contradict this fiscally-responsible attitude Pascal seems to be relying on.

Namely, Sony has acquired George Clooney’s production company Smokehouse Pictures after Clooney and production partner Grant Heslov left Warner Brothers. Which is odd, because if Clooney’s flicks were making bank, Warners would have put up a fight, right?

Not to mention some interesting inclusions in the press release:

The Smokehouse Pictures team includes Senior Vice President of Development Nina Wolarsky, and creative executive Alex Meenehan. The company is currently in development on the following projects with Warner Bros:
THE CHALLENGE
Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. An adaptation of Jonathan Mahler’s nonfiction book chronicling the historic Supreme Court case in which two lawyers sued the Bush administration on behalf of accused terrorist Salim Hamdan.
OUR BRAND IS CRISIS
A satirical comedy about American spin doctors competing in the same Presidential election in Bolivia. Based on the documentary by Rachel Boynton, with a script by Peter Straughan (MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS).
FARRAGUT NORTH
An adaptation of Beau Willimon’s critically acclaimed play, set during the Iowa primary of a presidential race.
ESCAPE FROM TEHRAN
The true story of how the CIA used a fake movie project to smuggle hostages out of 1979 Tehran. Chris Terrio is writing the screenplay.
THE TOURIST
A contemporary spy thriller about a spy who risks everything to reveal a conspiracy after he’s accused of a murder he didn’t commit. Based on the bestselling book by Olen Steinhauer. Tony Peckham is writing the screenplay.
THE INNOCENT MAN
Based on the bestselling nonfiction book by John Grisham, the true story of murder and injustice in a small town in Oklahoma. Adapted by David Gordon Green.

Any of those movies sound like a sure-fire hit to you? Probably not. They all sound interesting and intellectually challenging, as is the wont of Smokehouse Pictures, but marketable? As Will Smith would say: “Naw.”

As of now, Moneyball still exists as a project, though Soderbergh has been booted and Pitt is the only name attached. Pascal still has her finger on the Moneyball money button, since Steven was unable to drum up any other studio support for his accurate film while the script was in limited turnaround.

So here’s the question: What is Amy Pascal doing? Is she going to save money, make money, or simply refuse to roll the dice on a project based on creative integrity alone?

Guess what, Amy, you just made my watchlist (though you’ll never usurp the top Most Hated spot from NBC’s Ben Silverman).

How Studio Movies Die, Featuring Moneyball

Dave — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:26:57 +0000

The news around Moneyball has gotten worse, now that the studios have had the weekend and Monday to weigh the risks behind the Steven Soderbergh/Brad Pitt baseball film.

As explained previously (CLICK), Moneyball is a film based on the true story of William Lemar “Billy” Beane managing the Oakland A’s to a winning record without massively overloading the team’s budget. Pitt is attached to play Beane and comedian Dimitri Martin is one of the few other actors in the cast made up of real life baseball players.

Columbia head Amy Pascal put the project into limited turnaround, hoping either Warner Brothers, who had ties to Soderbergh or Paramount, which houses Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B.

It was a bad weekend to go to Paramount with last Friday’s executive shake-up changing the company’s creative development landscape and, according to The LA Times, a bad movie to shop around to Warners in the first place:

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as “State of Play,” “Duplicity” and “The International,” have all fared poorly at the box office this year. “Moneyball” has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film’s total sales.
As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.
“In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren’t going to make the movie,” said Pitt’s manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt “totally supports Steven all the way” in his vision for the movie.
Soderbergh’s manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

The details about how and what went wrong seem to vary from source to source. The LA Times piece sounds reasonable when suggesting that the current economic climate and short-comings of similarly themed films chased Columbia, Warners and Paramount away, but something feels off about that sentiment.

Judging from all reports, it seems that Soderbergh’s most recent draft made Pascal nervous about the financial prospects of a baseball film that needs to gross $100 million dollars to break even. What’s odd is that it doesn’t seem like the new draft was that drastically different, and given the above reasons cited by the Times, I can guarantee you that it’s always been an adult-themed baseball movie. Just what flick did Pascal think she was developing, and when did it start seeming like a bad idea?

We do know that Pascal and Soderbergh have met and agreed to disagree, which isn’t unusual for the director, who had a similarly convoluted and turnaround-filled process for his film Traffic (a picture studio execs were also nervous about, both because of it’s subtitled sequences and run-and-gun visual style), but Russ Fischer from /Film pointed me in the direction of a post on “The Hot Blog” that suggests Brad Pitt is “pulling a State Of Play” by holding up Moneyball and Pascal is falling on the poor-PR sword to save Pitt from a nasty industry reputation.

Sad thing is, if that report has any air of truth to it, we’ll never know. It’s not like Brad Pitt is hiring bush-league publicits.

For all intensive purposes, Moneyball is dead, at least with this particular cast and crew. Short of a financing miracle akin to DreamWorks’ Dubai connections (not that it worked out, but it was exciting), we probably won’t be seeing a Brad Pitt/Steven Soderbergh baseball film.

Columbia Put The Brakes On Moneyball

Dave — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:25:13 +0000

Today was supposed to be the first day of principal photography on Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball, an adaptation of the bestselling Michael Lewis novel about former ballplayer William Lemar “Billy” Beane, who combined the Oakland A’s cost-effective strategy with a winning team starting in 1998.

Brad Pitt was attached to play Beane, and the rest of the cast was attached, including real life players Scott Hatteberg and David Justice, camera tests had been done, the budget was in place…but Amy Pascal, head of Columbia pictures put the film into limited turnaround last Friday, meaning Soderbergh can shop the script around to other studios in an attempt to get someone like Warner Brothers (who used to be the umbrella for Soderbergh’s Section Eight) or Paramount (who is still the home to Pitt’s Plan B) to foot the bill and champion the picture.

By all trade accounts, Pascal didn’t like the new draft of the script, still by Steven Zaillian, but tweaked by Soderbergh. The inclusion of non-fiction interviews with ex-ballplayers interspersed throughout the narrative might have been what threw Pascal, but all accounts suggest that she hadn’t actually seen the interviews already shot.

From what’s been reported, Pascal just got $50 million dollar cold feet, knowing that the budget was relatively low for a Brad Pitt flick with an Oscar winning director onboard, but that most American sports films fail to perform over seas. It’s entirely possible that Pascal simply didn’t see the marketing angle or drama in the new draft of the script, though it’s odd that script issues kill a film this close to production.

The whole thing smacks of irony, both with the story of Moneyball, the book, focusing on Sabermetrics, the analysis of baseball through objective evidence and without subjective judgments (so: Baseball movies don’t make much money, this one is expensive, let’s not make it, regardless of how many good folks are on board) and the fact that Brad Pitt dropped out of State Of Play (to be replaced by Russell Crowe) for the exact same reason: the shooting script differed too much from his idea of the film.

As of this morning, neither Warners or Paramount have announced financing of Moneyball.