Columbia Pictures has released the first teaser trailer for Moneyball by way of Entertainment Tonight.  Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of Oakland Athletics who helped usher in a statistical revolution to professional baseball.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Stephen Bishop, Kathryn Morris, and Chris Pratt also star.  Bennett Miller (Capote) directed the movie from a script by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian.  Moneyball opens September 23.  Watch the trailer after the break.

[Update: Sony has released the official version of the trailer, which we've now included after the jump]

Click over to Yahoo! to watch in HD.

I love the book.  Insomuch as Moneyball is about statistics, it's difficult to visualize as a Hollywood movie starring Brad Pitt.  But author Michael Lewis is a journalist by trade rather than a statistician, and really tells the hell out of the story.  The main conflict is very clear in the trailer: Billy Beane against the traditionalists.  The way it unfolds in the above two minutes seems practically formulaic.

Yet the clip hints at so much style.  I love the way the stadium is lit at night.  And I can't wait to see the "getting the gang together" montage applied to a multimillion dollar professional sports team.

Official synopsis:

Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's and the guy who assembles the team, who has an epiphany: all of baseball's conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams with Ivy League grad Peter Brand in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It's more than baseball, it's a revolution -- one that challenges old school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he's tearing out the heart and soul of the game