Sure Moneyball was a fun book, but it wasn't that mindblowing. The lesson was basically: It pays to examine the data in a field dominated by age-old conventional wisdom. Still, a lot of folks swear by it.
Good news for them: According to Variety, It's being turned into a movie with Brad Pitt as the likely lead! The choice of Pitt, who will presumably portray Oakland A's GM Billy Beane, allows the movie to make wonky talk of PECOTA and DIPS sound really sexy. Hopefully he'll be enough to prevent the sad girlfriends dragged to the theater from running out in tears of boredom.
Meanwhile, we wonder what's going on with the other movies in the roader pop-geek-econ-stats genre, that's become so popular. Does anyone have any clue what's going on with the Freakonomics movie or the Blink movie, starring Leo DiCaprio?
The good news for Hollywood is that a whole cottage industry has spawned around this genre. So there's plenty of opportunity for sequels and conceptual recycling. Surely, with the financial collapse, some enterprising screenwriter will try to write the Fooled by Randomness movie, or if they're really daring, they could try The Black Swan.
