Beaks here...

If anyone can find the movie in Michael Lewis's MONEYBALL: THE ART OF WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME, it's Steven Soderbergh. As one of the most cerebral directors working and a baseball fan, Soderbergh is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Billy Beane, the eccentric general manager of the Oakland Athletics who devised a statistical system that allowed his small-market team to compete with the loaded, cash-burning likes of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Or Soderbergh could give us the cinematic equivalent of THE BILL JAMES BASEBALL ABSTRACT. As a baseball fan myself, either would be fine with me. There's poetry in sabermetrics.

According to Variety, Soderbergh would be joined by Brad Pitt, who's been chasing the project for a year or so. It sounds like the current draft is by Oscar-winner Steve Zaillian, which is encouraging. MONEYBALL would take the place of Soderbergh's delayed Antony-and-Cleopatra rock opera CLEO (scheduling complications knocked out co-lead Hugh Jackman). It's set up at Columbia, and will be produced by Michael De Luca and Rachel Horovitz.