Well, it has already come out that Brad Pitt and Dmitri Martin are going to be playing Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta in the Moneyball movie.
But now it turns out that there are a lot of liberties taken with the script, making the adaptation of the book much looser, according to a new story out.
In the movie, Beane will no longer be the g.m. of the A's, who are apparently too low-profile for a major studio movie. Instead, Beane will be g.m. of the Anaheim Angels. Cameron Diaz is apparently being talked to about playing Julie Wayne, a Kim Ng-type member of the front office with the crosstown rival Dodgers. Wayne is a woman who is Beane's intellectual equal and who provides a sparring partner with some sexual tension for him.
Although Beane is, of course, married in real life, the producers are apparently considering portraying him as a single dad in order to allow them to develop a romantic subplot with the Wayne character. Apparently, the success of "Fever Pitch" has the producers wanting to try to re-package "Moneyball" more along the lines of a romantic comedy that takes place in the front offices of a baseball team.
Dmitri Martin's casting as DePodesta seemed a bit odd to me until I read at the link below that the DePodesta character is being written as a sort of savant, a Rainman-type who has memorized every stat on every player but has a hard time interacting with people other than Beane. Steve Carell was apparently approached about the role, but he felt that as written, it was too similar to his Brick Tamlund character from Anchorman.
Chad Bradford, played by Mos Def, is written as a fringe guy down on his luck who turns his career around when Beane has a heart to heart with him and tells him he believes in him.
The climax has Beane's Angels playing Wayne's Dodgers in the World Series, and the Beane character, who has been pursuing Wayne all season, makes her a bet -- if the Dodgers win, he'll resign as g.m. of the Angels, but if the Angels win, Wayne will marry him. And while it looks like the Angels are going to go down, Jeremy Brown (played by Sean Astin) ends up legging out an infield single that drives in the winning run in Game 7, giving the Angels the Series.
All this info, along with more about the changes from book to movie, can be found here.