The production of “Moneyball,” a Steven Soderbergh film in which Brad Pitt was set to star as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, has shut down, just days before the cameras were scheduled to roll.

As much as I like baseball, Soderbergh and Pitt, I never understood how Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book about sports economics was going to become a movie. Apparently Columbia Pictures agreed. Studio chief Amy Pascal balked at Soderbergh’s script when she discovered it was a major revision of the draft originally submitted by Oscar winner Steve Zaillian (”schindler’s List”). The new concept reportedly would have included interviews with former athletes woven into a narrative arc.

If another studio doesn’t pick up the project, Soderbergh will be free to begin his Roaring ’20s musical based on the life of Cleopatra, featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones and the music of Guided by Voices. And Pitt can finally do his dream project about an ageless bocce-ball player, “The Curious Case of Benito Bettini.”