It appears that Sony Pictures loves money and ball since, despite reported problems, the studio is still keen on the baseball project Moneyball for which they have hired The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin to polish Steve Zaillian’s early script.
Apparently, the film was scheduled to begin shooting very soon, but the studio put it into turnaround as director Steven Soderbergh’s new version of the script took a more documentary approach, which studio chief Amy Pascal felt would hurt the film’s commercial prospects.
The studio hopes that Sorkin’s changes will bring the project back to the style they favor. The film tells the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who assembled a baseball club on a shoestring budget by using computer-based analysis to draft players.
Brad Pitt is attached to star. However, Soderbegh is no longer set to direct.
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One of Hollywood’s biggest writers and show creators, Aaron Sorkin, is getting chummy on Facebook.
Sorkin is in talks about writing a film about the founders of the popular social networking site.
According to Hollywood Reporter, Sorkin broke the news on Facebook when he opened up his own account.
“I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name — which I find more flattering than creepy — but this is me. I don’t know how I can prove that but feel free to test me,” he wrote before going on to talk about the movie project.
“I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she’s been dead for 33 years.)”
Sorkin also asked the Facebook public for any stories relating to the site.
“I feel about this introduction the way I felt about ‘Sophie’s Choice’: It could have been funnier,” Sorkin finished.
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While on tour promoting “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” Steven Spielberg told German magazine FOCUS, he plans to put his attention on a huge project about President Lincoln and the Civil War. Filming could start early next year.
However, Spielberg plans to shoot “Tintin” in early fall first. It looks like back-to-back projects.
Keep in mind that the director has another project in the wings as well. He been prepping the Aaron Sorkin-scripted “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” but, according to Variety, that became sketchy after he could not get rewrites during the writer’s strike. Spielberg had enlisted Sacha Baron Cohen and talked to other high profile actors about starring in a drama about the trial of anti-Vietnam war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That film will have to wait.
The Lincoln project looks like a sure thing after “Tintin” and could be ready for an early 2009 shoot because of several variables: Spielberg has proved adept at shooting back-to-back films, which he did most memorably when he made “Jurassic Park” and the Oscar-winning “Schindler’s List” in 1993. Also, his Lincoln project — informed by the biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln” — has a strong script by “Angels in America” playwright Tony Kushner (who rewrote “Munich” for Spielberg).
Spielberg also has Liam Neeson –who played Oskar Schindler — ready to play Lincoln. Neeson agreed more than three years ago to play the role for Spielberg, and has been waiting for a start date.
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