It was the end of last year, when Brad Pitt agreed to star in Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. A baseball film which was to be directed by Stephen Soderbergh.

It has all gone a bit pear shaped though, the studio involved has pulled the plug. And with filming due to start today.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is based on the book by Michael Lewis. It tells the story of Billy Beane, a former baseball player who became the manager of the Oakland A's. Despite having less money to spend, Beane used sophisticated computer statistics to pick his team. A plan which seemed to succeed as the team managed to compete with other teams, who had more money.

Brad Pitt agreed to play the part of Billy Beane way back in October last year. And then Stephen Soderbergh joined as director earlier this year, perhaps putting Cleopatra to one one side. Production was due to start today in Arizona, but the studio has stopped that going ahead.

Variety say the head of Columbia Pictures, Amy Pascal, read the most recent script and felt it deviated too much from the original concept. Steven Soderbergh had made his own rewrites to the script by Steven Zaillian, and they haven't proved popular. Soderbergh now has a limited time to find another studio who will take the project on. The other options are to remove Soderbergh from the project, or hope that they can find a script which they all agree on.

Sounds like the usual shenanigans, but with this all kicking off on Friday, it's closer to the filming date than you would expect. I guess we will find out soon enough whether the project moves forward or not.

Anyone out there read the book? Is it good material?