The movie Brad Pitt “single-handedly” saved from extinction: “It was dead”
Most actors and filmmakers have at least one passion project that they repeatedly tried to get off the ground to no avail, but Brad Pitt refused to take no for an answer and single-handedly revived what was essentially a dead movie, transforming it into one of his most acclaimed efforts in the process.
Obviously, when someone is as big a star as Pitt and as powerful on both sides of the camera, ‘no’ isn’t a word that he’s used to hearing. He’s famous, successful, and bankable enough to get a green light on almost anything he wants, but even he found his clout being stretched to the limit.
For a while, it was relatively plain sailing. The picture had a completed screenplay, a director was hired, a cast was assembled, and the principal photography was scheduled. However, five days before the first day of shooting, Sony abruptly cancelled Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball, sending Pitt into a tailspin.
As he tends to do, the Academy Award-winning auteur had taken a pass at the script, but the studio baulked at his last-minute revisions, fearing the heavy reliance on baseball terminology would alienate casual audiences. With almost $60 million on the line, a compromise needed to be reached, and nobody was willing to reach it.
According to Soderbergh, he was “unceremoniously removed” from the director’s chair, and Sony tried to sell Moneyball off to Paramount and Warner Bros, both of which declined. It was as good as extinct by September 2009, until Pitt decided that he would move heaven and earth to make it happen.
“Nobody wanted to buy disgraced goods,” the two-time Oscar-winning actor and producer admitted to The Hollywood Reporter. “It was dead.” Only for a while, though, with Bennett Miller swiftly approached to replace Soderbergh. Still, Pitt acknowledged that “there was a lot of disagreement” between himself and the studio, which eventually resurrected the film and agreed to let it be made the way he wanted.
The leading man agreed to take a significant pay cut, the budget was whittled down to under $50 million, and by July 2010, the movie was finally in front of the cameras. Pitt’s perseverance and dogged determination had paid off, and producer Scott Rudin knew there was only one person to thank for making it a reality after so many setbacks.
“There would be no Moneyball without him,” he said. “He saved it single-handedly, and he deserves the credit for it existing at all.” Cinemagoers were surprisingly on board with what was ostensibly a dialogue-heavy sports drama with a hefty emphasis on maths and statistical analysis, with the film crossing the nine-figure barrier at the box office.
In addition, Miller’s flick landed six Oscar nominations, with Pitt pulling double duty after being shortlisted in the ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Actor’ categories. He didn’t win either of them, but the fact that Moneyball even made it over the finish line was a victory in itself.
