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The last time we saw Steven Soderbergh and Brad Pitt working together, they were making a movie about high theft in the last round of Ocean’s. In those days they were wrapped up in intricate schemes, playing shadow games and stealing the rug out from underneath Vegas’ elite. So it seems fitting that their next project together will also involve intricate scheming and the eventual defeat of “the man” — it will just involve baseball and be set in Oakland.

Soderberg and Pitt are both currently eying a project based on the Michael Lewis book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” which tells the story of Billy Beane, the former Oakland Athletics general manager who used a sophisticated computer analysis program piece together a team that regularly contended for the World Series despite being in a much smaller market and having a far-smaller payroll than teams such as the New York Yankees.

As reported by Variety, this will be Soderbergh’s next film instead of the musical adaptation Cleo, about the fatal romance between Egyptian queen Cleopatra and Roman general Marc Antony. That project was pushed back after Hugh Jackman, who was set to play Antony, had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Soderbergh recently completed his low-budget project The Girlfriend Experience, which screened its way to immense critical praise at Sundance in January. For more on that, check out my Girlfriend Experience report. He will also release the comedy The Informant, starring Matt Damon later this year.

As a fan of Soderbergh’s work, this project has my interest. That and Brad Pitt isn’t too bad, either.

What do you think of Soderbergh’s next project? Has anyone out there read ‘Moneyball’?