Why was Steven Soderbergh fired from ‘Moneyball’?
Even factoring in his short-lived retirement, which was admittedly one of the least effective retirements in the history of anybody retiring from anything, Steven Soderbergh has maintained a prolific pace throughout his directorial career.
Since the release of his industry-shaking and Palme d’Or-winning feature debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, in 1989, the filmmaker has helmed another 35 more. Averaging one new movie a year is impressive under any circumstances, and it’s arguably even more impressive for Soderbergh, considering he’s always doing something else.
He’s written movies that he hasn’t directed, produced, shot second unit, served as the director of photography, made short films, developed TV shows, and dabbled in art, making it patently clear that his worst nightmare is having nothing to do. Still, despite all of his accomplishments, which include an Academy Award win for ‘Best Director’ when one of the nominees he was competing against was himself, Soderbergh isn’t immune from the wrath of studio politics.
In February 2009, it was announced that Soderbergh would reunite with Ocean’s alumni Brad Pitt for an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Things were progressing swimmingly, with a July start date locked in for the first day of production.
However, five days before cameras were supposed to start rolling, Sony shuttered the project. Unbeknownst to the studio, Soderbergh had performed a last-minute rewrite of Steven Zaillian’s screenplay that, from their perspective, drastically reduced Moneyball‘s mainstream appeal with “an abundance of baseball details.” When a compromise failed to be reached, the film was shut down.
Reading between the lines wasn’t required when Soderbergh admitted two months later that “there have been a couple of times in my career where I’ve been unceremoniously removed from projects,” and it was in the best interest of all parties to sever ties when “it became clear that there was no iteration of that movie that I was going to direct.”
Sony had its vision for Moneyball, and Soderbergh had his. He may have left it a little late in the day to present his version, but it was swiftly resurrected in December with Bennett Miller in the director’s chair and it would go on to earn over $100million at the global box office and notch six Oscar nominations, including ‘Best Picture’.
What did Soderbergh do instead?
This being Soderbergh, he was hardly going to sit around feeling sorry for himself. As he’s been doing for his entire career, he simply threw himself back into his work and made two movies in the period between his exit from Moneyball and the release of Bennett’s film.
His first post-Moneyball project was the documentary And Everything Is Going Fine about the life of Spalding Gray, which premiered in January 2010, six months after he’d been dumped from the sports drama. By his standards it was a while before he returned to features, but he made up for lost time.
Shooting on the disaster thriller Contagion kicked off in Hong Kong in September 2010, with Soderbergh and his crew pitching up in Chicago, Atlanta, London, Geneva, and San Francisco. The star-studded ensemble piece was released in September 2011, by which time he was already putting the finishing touches on the next one.
Action thriller Haywire shot the bulk of its footage before Contagion, but after the genre flick had shifted between distributors, it ended up sitting on the shelf for over a year. Using that time to his advantage, Soderbergh made and edited Contagion before returning to Haywire for additional photography and post-production, with the two films released less than three months apart.
He wasn’t done there either, with Magic Mike beginning production in September 2011, the same month Miller’s Moneyball arrived on the big screen. It was a setback for the Oscar winner to dedicate so much time and effort to the baseball story without having anything to show for it, but he definitely made up for lost time and then some.
From his departure from Moneyball to the theatrical premiere of his replacement’s adaptation of the nonfiction book, Soderbergh made a documentary, shot most of Haywire, made all of Contagion, returned to finish Haywire, and called action on Magic Mike, a movie in which he also acted as editor and DP.
