Moneyball

Sony killed Moneyball five days before Phoenix.

Brad Pitt was packed for the June 2009 shoot when Amy Pascal pulled the plug. Steven Soderbergh was days from cameras. He wanted real A's players as themselves and interview footage inside a roughly $58 million feature. Pascal told the Los Angeles Times the draft "wasn't at all what we'd signed up for." Paramount and Warner Bros. both passed in turnaround. latestnetflix.com's take is that Pitt later told the paper the making of the movie was "just as interesting as the movie itself" , .

Scott Rudin, who arrived after the wreck, put the rescue on Pitt. "There would be no Moneyball without him. He saved it single-handedly, and he deserves the credit for its existing at all" . Aaron Sorkin rewrote Steven Zaillian. Bennett Miller, idle since Capote, took the chair after Catherine Keener pointed Pitt at him. The budget landed near $50 million. Pitt's pay was reported at $10 million to $15 million . Cameras rolled in July 2010. Toronto premiered it 9 September 2011. Theaters got it on the 23rd .

Paul DePodesta took his name off the script.

Demetri Martin had been cast as Paul DePodesta in the Soderbergh version. Jonah Hill replaced him. DePodesta asked that his name come off. "At the end of the day, I just wasn't comfortable with my name on a fictitious character," he wrote. The movie called Hill's guy Peter Brand , . DePodesta later told reporters the conflict around that character "was never really the case in reality" .

Art Howe never got that choice.

Philip Seymour Hoffman played the A's manager as the brick wall. Howe called it "character assassination" after he saw it. "It wasn't even close to my personality. They just went out of their way to degrade me." He said producers never consulted him, and the New York Post said he wanted a refund . Hoffman later told Esquire he hoped to meet Howe and say he "actively did not play" him, and that Howe "should've taken his name off it" . They never met. Scott Hatteberg, played by Chris Pratt, said the real Howe had been a supporter, not a roadblock .

Pratt has told the audition story more than once. Miller sat with his feet on the desk and said Pratt felt like a guy auditioning next to Brad Pitt. Pratt told them it was his house, told Miller to get his feet off the desk, and threw both men out so they could knock and come back in . His agent still called after. They thought he was too fat. He dropped weight and got Hatteberg . Kathryn Morris shot four scenes as Beane's second wife. Miller cut all of them. Beane still wears a wedding ring in the finished cut. Activision's Bobby Kotick plays owner Stephen Schott. A 2011 Times piece said you would not find that owner in the credits .

Six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Pitt, Hill, and adapted screenplay. Zero wins. $110.2 million worldwide on about $50 million . Sony's trailer is still the one where Pitt says there are rich teams and poor teams, then fifty feet of crap, then Oakland . Howe bought a ticket anyway.