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Hot Trailer: ‘The Great Gatsby’ 
Steve Zaillian is back in the lineup on Moneyball, the Columbia Pictures baseball film based on the Michael Lewis book. If you recall, Zaillian wrote the Moneyball draft that had the studio ready to put the baseball film into production—until a Steve Soderbergh rewrite detoured the film about Oakland As general manager Billy Beane into docudrama territory and the movie was unplugged the weekend before shooting began. Zaillian was unavailable when Sony was ready to try again, and the studio brought on Aaron Sorkin, who had just finished The Social Network for the studio. Insiders roundly credit Sorkin’s work for making the film a go, with Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill and Robin Wright committed. But director Bennett Miller wanted to bring back three scenes from the Zaillian script. Since he completed his own adaptation of the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zaillian was available to return. Sorkin is still firmly in the picture, though, and will do a final polish before production begins July 12.
Now Pinch-Writing On ‘Moneyball,’ Steve Zaillian
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Another Armenian I’m proud of. Good job Steve. Can’t wait to see it.
The drama behind the making of this picture is more interesting than the story itself. No one will see this vanity project and it will die internationally.
Wow! Zaillian and Sorkin doin’ writes? This has got to be a hit! Or at the very least fantastic! But Jonah Hill? Come on. This guy’s not exactly easy on the eyes!
I don’t know why Hill has to be in that many movies, either. The guy’s getting on my nerves.
I really want to know how much money in development costs Sony has spent on this project. I know they will never reveal the true number but it must be more than the budget of a Fox Searchlight film.
let’s be clear..Zaillian was not brought in to do the original rewrite because his script was NOT approved by MLB. The Soderbergh draft (off of the Zaillian script) is the only script to be approved by Brad Pitt (check with Sony) as well as MLB. Here they are 6 weeks out from shooting and your article mentions they’re doing 2 rewrites? Zaillian and then a Sorkin polish? They still don’t have MLB approval for anything.
What is this, a six million dollar script now? Or is it more?
Sounds like they could have just clicked on “cut-and-paste”.
With these talented writers it better be good. I go with shoot the script given. Story board it and dont mess with it. Don’t get into conversations about this way or that way…shoot it. Now hopefully Sony will take the time and find an MIB3 script oompleted and done agreed to before they start shooting. Map it out…dont putz around and dither or dather. Have a plan…
my dad says “dragon” is a terrific book
Hey everybody. Brian’s dad likes the book. I’M IN!
It isn’t. Written by a hardcore Communist, it has a huge dose of Captain Save-a-Ho, with some young stripper, tattooed up the yin-yang, and a healthy dose of civilizational self-loathing. Mostly its status-mongering, with terminal PC.
Detective stuff either appeals to the older female set (Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Miss Marple, Poirot, Murder She Wrote) or the younger male crowd (where it’s more action/adventure based, Holmes, Hammett, etc.)
This is neither. Protagonist a booze-soaked Communist Journalist. I’m sure it made sense to PC Swedes who (really) dress up their sons in dresses to make sure their male-ness is erased (meanwhile Swedish women are marrying Muslim polygamists who may beat them but aren’t gayed up by feminists). But for older women or younger men, it’s a disaster.
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Moneyball is a great story — about mavericks using science and stats to win, over conventional wisdom. Led by the “sure thing” that misfired.
I quite enjoyed the Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy. Glad that Zaillian wrote the script for the US-version.
Could someone please kill the casting rumors re: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo already? I mean, Carey Mulligan, seriously? It’s totally laughable and I don’t believe it for a minute, but still… Must be some prankster’s idea who has a problem with remakes like that, right? Carey Mulligan as Lisbeth? You might as well call the film DOA.
Here’s to Fincher, who hopefully does a better job with the rape-scene (it’s almost good as is save for a couple of exploitative shots) and doesn’t go all porn with the lesbian sex-scene (quite the misstep by the scandinavian filmmakers).
Sure hope Lisbeth doesn’t have to be made “more sympathetic” via making her more mainstream. That would kill her and it. She’s one of the most interesting, kick-ass and believable female characters I’ve seen in a long while.
Ho-hum. The usual A-list writing suspects. Look, I think both guys are tremendously talented but they’ve both written credited (and uncredited) bombs, too. Nobody except for friends and family of Zaillian and Sorkin goes to their movies because “they” wrote it. Sony and Amy Pascal just keep ratcheting up the budget of a specialty film by hiring the same 2 or 3 writers every time. (What? Brian Helgeland doesn’t get a crack at this?)
Having read Sorkin’s March 2010 draft, I will say this: It’s a good day when someone other than Sorkin takes a whack at “Moneyball.” Anyone who knows anything about studio politics knows that Sorkin could have turned in 136 pages of “all work and no play makes sorkin a dull boy” and the script would have been “brilliant.” You don’t get a dead project revived by admitting that the all star writer brought in to “save” the film just did a blah job.
Sony needs to hire a Ron Shelton or a John Hancock who knows something about the soul of baseball. It’s a real thing, and either you get it, or you don’t.
So basically Sony’s re-hiring Zaillian — forking over tens of thousands of dollars if not hundreds depending on Zaillian’s quote — to add scenes from a draft he’s already written into the most recent draft? Is there some reason Sorkin can’t do this if he’s gonna be the last writer anyway?
Way to keep that budget down, Sony.
Throwing money at the problem (actors, writers, and directors) will not change the fact that this story is NOT a movie.
What’s next, a movie based on a non-fiction story about using statistics to win in Vegas? Oops, forgot 21. At least there was sex and violence. Where’s the plot here?