Soderbergh Finally Talks About Moneyball

Steven Soderbergh is nothing if not professional, and when a project doesn't work out for a pro, they just move on. Moneyball, Soderbergh's planned adaptation of the Michael Lewis book about the stat-based success of Oakland A's manager Billy Beane, was famously canceled at the last minute a couple months ago. But we didn't hear a peep out of Soderbergh about the project's failure, until now.

Speaking to the Orlando Sentinel, Soderbergh says of Moneyball:

There have been a couple of times in my career where I've been unceremoniously removed from projects. I don't waste a lot of energy on it. It doesn't get you anywhere. As soon as it became clear that there was no iteration of that movie that I was going to get to direct, I immediately started looking around for something else to do.

And that's it. Which, while unsatisfying if you want dirt, is actually refreshing. It's Hollywood. Something didn't work. Move on. And he has, towards an unnamed project that he has ready to go at the start of the year, and to his Liberace movie with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover Scott Thorson, for which he's currently raising money.

Then there's still Cleo, the 3D musical about Cleopatra with music by Guided by Voices, which Soderbergh says will be "a total party."

I'm going to do it in 3D, because I think that's a viable format. You're going to see more people working in it. I want to see the first person take a shot at doing a straight drama in 3D. Maybe the way to do it would be to make a period drama in 3D where it really contributes to your sense of being in that world. Cleopatra's world would be a natural for this.

As someone who is not at all a fan of 3D, considering Soderbergh making this happen is one of the few things that gets me excited for 3D to be added to a film. What will we never see Soderbergh do? "I won't do a Western. I hate horses. HATE them. They terrify me. Really really scary." And that makes me more than a little bit sad, but I can trade a Western for a big musical party about Cleopatra in a second.