At bat after 'Moneyball' lineup change

By STEVEN ZEITCHIK Los Angeles Times TORONTO -- In June 2009, just a few days before Brad Pitt, director Steven Soderbergh and others were set to board a plane for Phoenix to begin shooting the film version of Michael Lewis' baseball best-seller "Moneyball," the unthinkable happened. Despite the months spent preparing the shoot and the star wattage involved, Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal pulled the plug on the movie. Soderbergh was leaving the project, the studio announced, and the film's future was in serious doubt. It was the equivalent of a freak triple play killing a no-out, bases-loaded rally. Two years later, "Moneyball" is not only complete but is about to be unveiled, a remarkable comeback in an industry where even small obstacles can be fatal. Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing," "The Social Network") came on to rewrite the script, and Bennett Miller ("Capote") took over as director; Pitt stayed aboard starring as the fiercely driven Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who fights the odds and conventional baseball wisdom with ragtag players. The film will have its premiere Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival ahead of its Sept. 23 general release in the U.S. Depending on one's viewpoint, the rollout caps a feel-good underdog story that could have been lifted straight from the movie or offers a glimpse into what can nearly doom a film with even the shiniest pedigree. Or maybe it's both. Its success at the box office and with Academy Awards voters remains to be seen, but one aspect of the film has already achieved an Oscar-worthy level of drama. "I think the making of the movie is just as interesting as the movie itself," Pitt told the Los Angeles Times in May. In interviews with multiple sources familiar with the development process who requested anonymity because Sony and producer Scott Rudin did not authorize them to speak publicly, a colorful picture emerges, filled with big personalities and clashing visions. A potential "Moneyball" film began life in late 2003, when producer Rachael Horovitz obtained the rights to Lewis' book and teamed with writer Stan Chervin on it. Lewis' nonfiction work spent months on the best-seller list, and soon Sony would win a bidding war to make the film version. The studio enlisted veteran Hollywood producer Michael De Luca to work on it. But what kind of film he and others could carve from "Moneyball" was not obvious: Roughly half the book told the personal story of Beane, a failed baseball prospect who'd found redemption as a general manager. The other half, however, was a historical and mathematical account of sabermetrics, the complicated quantitative analysis Beane used to evaluate talent. "Field of Dreams" it wasn't. The project trotted along like an aging catcher. Chervin wrote several drafts before Pitt was attracted to it. Soon after, Steven Zaillian, who won an Oscar for "Schindler's List," was brought on to write a draft of the script. "The Devil Wears Prada" director David Frankel came on to direct and worked on it for several years before falling off. In January 2009, however, Soderbergh came aboard, and the film rocketed forward. A lifelong baseball fan - he was known for sleeping in his Little League uniform as a child - the "sex, lies, and videotape" auteur began crafting the movie as something that would blend elements of a documentary with statistics and the larger A's story. The film was to begin shooting that June. Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/09/2403996/at-bat-after-moneyball-lineup.html#ixzz1XpbOqkwe