Last summer, Sony pulled the plug on the adaptation of Moneyball, likely thinking that even with Brad Pitt and Steven Soderbergh attached it wasn’t going to make any dough. But now that another Lewis sports adaptation -- “The Blind Side” -- has made good money in its first week, Hollywood is changing its mind. Sony has announced that Bennett Miller, who was nominated for a Best Director Academy Award for “Capote,” is in negotiations to helm the project and things may get underway again soon.
I’m still a bit dubious that “Moneyball” makes a good movie. But if they do what they appeared to do with the “Blind Side” -- i.e. take a slice of the human stories involved and build something off of that rather than make it a movie about sabermetrics -- they might just have something there.
Oh, and they have to keep the scene from the script in which Billy Beane hooks up with the Outback Steakhouse waitress in Cleveland. That could cement his legend.