Public Enemies - What Did You Think?
Maybe The Last Moneyball Update For A While: Soderbergh Is Off The Project, MLB Approval Still Pending
Posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Time to back away from Moneyball for a while: the New York Times reports that Steven Soderbergh is totally off the project, only hours after the LA Times published an interview with Sony head Amy Pascal, who reiterated the studio’s reasons for bailing on the project. And both the Times and Movieline talked to Major League Baseball (MLB), which has been in the process of negotiating with Sony to approve the use of official logos and team names. The whole convoluted story is after the jump. Read More »
“From the director of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen” might tell you everything you need to know about the sales pitch for Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant. Based on the true story of Mark Whitacre, played by Matt Damon, who blew the whistle on price-fixing policies at grain processing conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland, the film adapts the book of the same name by Kurt Eichenwald. But the trailer promises anything but a dry boardroom battle. Cut to ‘Flight of the Valkyries’ and pop song ‘Would I Lie To You?’ and featuring some great moments from co-stars Scott Bakula and Tony Hale, this looks like The Insider meets Top Secret. Watch the trailer after the jump. Read More »
Warner Brothers, Paramount Pass On Soderbergh’s Moneyball
Posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Over the weekend, the biggest news in Hollywood was that Sony chief Amy Pascal had put the brakes on Steven Soderbergh’s baseball stats movie Moneyball, which had been set to begin shooting yesterday with Brad Pitt in the lead. Soderbergh was given the option to shop the movie to other studios over the weekend — ‘limited turnaround’ was the phrase used — and now thanks to the LA Times, we know that Warner Brothers and Paramount both passed. What it means for the movie, after the jump. Read More »
Sony Trashcans Moneyball Three Days Before Filming
Posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
Steven Soderbegh has been given the weekend to find a new home for his Brad Pitt baseball picture Moneyball. If another studio doesn’t step up by Monday, Columbia have the option to either fire Soderbergh and replace him or to stall the project indefinitely. The problem, according to Variety, is dispute over the shooting script. This latest draft by Soderbergh and Steve Zaillian has displeased Sony head honcho Amy Pascal so much that she’s taken the drastic measure of ditching what sounds like, to me, a golden opportunity. At the very least, this is a Brad Pitt vehicle from an Acadmey Award winning director and an equally Oscared screenwriter.
So, what doesn’t she like? Apparently that the script is innovative, that Soderbergh has some ambitious ideas and that the basic sport movie paradigm (yawn) simply doesn’t apply to this picture.
Stories like this make me fall in love with Steven Soderbergh all over again. He’s making Moneyball, a film based on Michael Lewis’ book of the same name about how Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane used an unusual statistics system to build the best and cheapest team in baseball. Brad Pitt is in the lead as Beane, Demetri Martin is in the cast and the script is by Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, American Gangster). This week, the LA Times reported that the budget is amazingly high for what sounds like a total niche movie: $57 million. Even with Pitt on board, that is remarkable. Where’s all that money going to go? Read More »
Key Character to Be Animated in Soderbergh’s Moneyball
Posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
I don’t know if you remember the various appearances by Dickie Fox in Jerry Maguire, the criminologist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Bruce Springsteen popping up in High Fidelity but those were those were the first two things to cross my mind when I read a new MTV article on Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball. The film is a fictional narrative based upon a non-fiction book and recounts how the Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane, as played by Brad Pitt, pioneers a new management system based upon an understanding of statistics.
This is where the toon comes in, because the book depends on the wisdom of Bill James, a stats master who provided the underlying knowledge and theory to make Beane’s plan viable, and rather than cast an actor as James in the film, Soderbergh has decided to have him animated.
Steven Soderbergh Praises James Cameron’s Avatar
Posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
It seems like every other week now a new filmmaker or studio executive makes a comment about how James Cameron’s Avatar is going to revolutionize cinema. Jon Favreau has called Avatar “a game-changer” and having seen some footage, he thinks “it’s the future.” Recently Sony head Amy Pascal told Forbes that she thinks Avatar is “going to change the way you consume entertainment. I don’t know that it will ever be the way you see dramas, but I can’t say anymore that it won’t be.” And Steven Spielberg has even predicted that Avatar will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever.
Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh is the latest filmmaker to praise Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi epic: “I’ve seen some stuff and holy sh*t,” Soderbergh told ComingSoon . “It’s the craziest sh*t ever. That could negate everything I just said.”
Cameron’s new film is being treated like the second coming. I’m not sure how the film could possibly live up to all the ginormously hype. But just like all of you, I’m riding on the high buzz and hoping it will be great.
Demetri Martin Cast in Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball
Posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Demetri Martin is on a roll. First he landed the lead role in Ang Lee’s comedy Taking Woodstock, and now he has signed to star alongside Brad Pitt in Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball. If it was announced next week that Martin had been cast in Scorsese’s next film, I wouldn’t be shocked at all (okay, maybe I would a little…)
Moneyball is an adaptation of the book by Michael Lewis (Moneyball: The Art to Winning an Unfair Game), which tells the story of ballplayer-turned-Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Pitt) who tried to create a competitive baseball team on a budget payroll. Martin will play a Harvard graduate named Paul De Podesta, who turned down jobs on Wall Street to use his statistical skills, a system known as “Earned Run Value,” to change baseball scouting tactics.
Columbia Pictures has also signed Oakland A’s team members David Justice and Scott Hatteberg to play themselves in the film. Schindler’s List and American Gangster scribe Steve Zaillian is doing a polish on the script, which was originally penned by Stan Chervin and Rachael Horovitz.
Movie Trailer: Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience
Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Magnolia Pictures has released the trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. Set in the weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election, the film tells the story of five days in the life of Chelsea (adult film star Sasha Grey in her mainstream film debut), an ultra high-end Manhattan call girl who offers more than sex to her clients, but companionship and conversation – “the girlfriend experience.” Chelsea thinks she has her life totally under control—she feels her future is secure because she runs her own business her own way, makes $2000 an hour, and has a devoted boyfriend (Chris Santos) who accepts her lifestyle. But when you’re in the business of meeting people, you never know who you’re going to meet…
The film has a surprise premiere, which I missed, at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Cinematical called it “an intimate and yet honest movie about honesty and intimacy.” Film School Rejects said that “Soderbergh has captured some truly stunning visuals and has delivered a non-linear narrative that is both engaging and not overly complicated.” CHUD said it felt like “Soderbergh’s indie half and mainstream half coming together; while related to Bubble, it feels much more accessible and complete.” The trailer is pretty intriguing.
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Two New Posters Amuse and Impress: The Girlfriend Experience and The Graves
Posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
It’s a good day for fans of those floppy things you can attach to the bedroom wall with blu-tack - or, more accurately, those things you gawp at in a browser window while wishing for the old days when you could actually reach out and touch the pretties. Two new posters have amused and impressed me this evening, in fairly different ways.
The first of them is for Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and comes from Vulture, the other is for Bryan Pulido’s The Graves and showed up on Neil Gaiman’s blog - you’ll see why - and both of them are hidden away under the break for you to enjoy too.
Woody Allen and Miyazaki Not Included on EW’s 25 Greatest Active Film Directors List
Posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Entertainment Weekly just published their list of the 25 Greatest Active Film Directors. It’s one of those really annoying slideshow stories, so we’ve done the legwork and printed the entire shortlist after the jump.
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Soderbergh To Direct “Liberace” Biopic, Michael Douglas To Play Lead
Posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 by David Chen
Steven Soderbergh’s career has always been incredibly diverse, ranging from the audacious Sex, Lies, and Videotape to the fluffy Ocean’s trilogy. Now comes word from Variety that Soderbergh is helming a biopic based on pianist Liberace’s life, a film still in early stages of development. Soderbergh wants Michael Douglas for the lead role, while Matt Damon is in discussions to play Scott Thorson, who claimed to be Liberace’s live-in boyfriend and sued him for $113 million in palimony.
I’m hopeful for this film’s potential because Liberace, who died in 1987, seems like he lived a life that doesn’t conform strictly to what I’m now calling the “Walk Hard paradigm” of biopics (i.e. musician overcomes the pain and horror of a family tragedy, achieves fame by the skin of his teeth, becomes hedonistic/misogynistic, deals with drugs/alcohol addiction, finds redemption in the end). Despite the fact that they’ve become tired and similar to each other, as a musician myself, I feel like some of the best moments of those types of films are when they convey the wonder and excitement of performing in front of large groups of people. Liberace’s career certainly seems like it would facilitate these types of powerful moments.
The film will not be Soderbergh’s next film, which is The Girlfriend Experience, and won’t even be his next film after that, so regardless of what you think of the idea, we won’t be seeing this one for awhile. Still, the movie seems like it could be an interesting way to introduce the entertainer to a whole new generation of moviegoers, many of whom probably only know Liberace by name and reputation, and not for the specific details of his musical career. As for Michael Douglas in the lead role, it’ll be heartening to see him truly flex his acting muscles for the first time in awhile.
Discuss: A Liberace biopic - Good idea/Bad idea? Also, what do you think of Michael Douglas in the lead role?
Source: Variety
