Sony Pictures has explained why it canceled Brad Pitt's million film just days after its scheduled shooting day. Co-chair Amy Pascal says they are willing to work with the A-lister for the project, but director Steven Soderbergh needs to trash his script idea first.

"Moneyball" is based on the 2003 bestselling book by Michael Lewis and is about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and general manager Billy Beane.

It was just five days away from filming when Soderbergh turned in a new version of the script. Sony found the new version unacceptable; thus they decided to pull the plug on it abruptly.

Pascal narrated to The L.A. Times, "I've wanted to work with Steven forever, because he's simply a great filmmaker. But the draft he turned in wasn't at all what we'd signed up for. He wanted to make a dramatic reenactment of events with real people playing themselves."

"I'd still work with Steven in a minute, but in terms of this project, he wanted to do the film in a different way than we did."

"Steven wanted to tell the story through these interviews with the real people, as they commented on Beane. But there are lots of ways to tell a true story. We were just more comfortable with what we thought was a wonderful draft from Steve Zaillian."

Sony offered Soderbergh the chance to take the film to another studio with his script, but so far none has been interested so "Moneyball" remains at Sony.