Michael Lewis' book about Billy Beane's strategy in making a small-market team successful in Major League Baseball, "Moneyball," is going to be made into a feature-length movie. Shooting isn't set to begin until June, but many of the key players are being put in place. Brad Pitt is going to play Oakland A's general manager Beane (the two are pictured side-by-side here) and Steven Soderbergh will be the director. Now, according to variety.com, Demetri Martin has been added to the fray, and he'll play Paul DePodesta, currently employed by the Padres, but formerly the Dodgers general manager and Beane's assistant GM in Oakland.
It's unclear the specific direction the movie will take, but we surmise that there will be more than a few baseball scenes, considering David Justice and Scott Hatteberg have been brought on-board to play themselves.
I know Nick Swisher was a central figure in the book, so maybe they'll have him jump in for a few scenes?
It will be very interesting to see how this movie is approached, because it's possible it could be very boring to a mass audience. Much of the book is spent in the trenches with Beane and DePodesta where they are crunching numbers and discussing how to get the maximum possible efficiency out of a roster. On the other hand, fans of the book might be a little put off if the movie strays from sabermetric discussions in favor of making everything more mainstream.
Either way, I'll likely be happy. It's a baseball movie based upon reality, which is hard to mess up.
