I saw the new Brad Pitt film Moneyball. Probably the most unusual baseball movie I’ve ever seen that didn’t involve the ghosts of dead players performing for Darth Vader. It was a little like Major League, but from the front office perspective. I enjoyed it. Pitt has become a talented, likable actor, which is rare for someone who’s perpetually in the “sexist man alive” conversations.

Good thing, too — they needed someone like him to deal with a movie about sabermetrics. For you non-baseball nerds, sabermetrics is a statistical analysis of player performance regardless of his star power or salary or girlfriend hotness quotient. You might be surprised to learn that people weren’t doing this constantly for the past 100 years — after all, what else do those numbers mean in the sports sections? What does everyone on ESPN jabber about constantly between April and November? (Answers: sudoku cheat-sheets and steroid scandals, respectively)

The problem with a sabermetrics movie is that “doing sabermetrics” involves staring at an Excel file. To many people, Excel is “one of those stupid programs that comes with Word.” An Excel-based movie should be Bridget Jones’ Pivot Table.

So there’s a difficult narrative. The movie is saved by some terrific performances by Pitt, the always awesome Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and a surprisingly nuanced turn by Jonah Hill. (Note to Paul DePodesta, VP of Player Development for the New York Goddamn Mets: You are free to ask that your name or likeness not be used in a movie based on a book covering part of your life. Be aware that if you do that, you may be played by Jonah Hill.)

They don't even have the same color eyes

All of this got me thinking about whether a star like Brad Pitt really helps a movie. Do people go to movies they would otherwise avoid because Brad Pitt (or George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio or whomever) appears in them? Does the exorbitant salary of an A-list star translate into increased revenue at the box office? Fortunately, thanks to Moneyball, I am now an expert of sabermetrics and can figure that out myself.

I’ve picked a few leading actors and actresses from the movies of 2009-2010. We’re going to look at how their movies performed financially in relation to their budget. I am limiting this to actors in a leading role, because supporting roles will make this orders of magnitude more complex. I also left off animated movies so we are looking at the same kind of acting. If Hollywood wants to overpay me for a more detailed look, they can contact me via the About page.

Click to biggenate

I did the same for a handful of directors:

This gets more depressing the longer you look

What does this tell us? Well, it says that The Dark Knight: Mall Cop vs Juno will do better than anyone expects, and The Imaginarium of Sex and the Gladiator is going right in the damn tank. Maybe it’s a good thing that Hollywood doesn’t do sabermetrics.

The columns in color are: the Average Tomatometer, which gauges how much the critics liked the movie, and the % Return, which is the percentage of the budget that came back once the movie was released. So an actor with an 80% average tomatometer score means that 4 of 5 reviewers enjoyed his movies. A 100% return means that the movie broke even.

Do it. She's *adorable!* (Note: Actual size)

A quick look at the two tables tells us that we should put Ellen Page in more Christopher Nolan movies immediately. They did one together, a modest little indie film called Inception. It might be too late to get her into the next Batman film, but maybe if Nolan does a Memento sequel… (Man, how messed up would a sequel to Memento be?)

Also keep Sarah Jessica Parker far away from Terry Gilliam. There is no money or glory down that road.

Obviously there’s more to it that what I’ve covered here, but it does take more than a big name to get a big profit. Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington are big names, both have their share of sex appeal, and both have won Oscars (one of which was totally deserved and the other was for Gladiator). But their movie studios could have saved everyone a lot of trouble recently by just burning $74 million dollars, or giving it to poor people or teachers or something. (Burning is better. Suck it, Bono.)

Keep smiling, George - eventually things will work out for you

It also shows, to no one’s surprise, that movie quality has no bearing on movie profitability. Did any of you see any of Kevin James’ movies between 2009 and 2010? No you did not. Are you nevertheless positive that they sucked? Of course you are. Do you think it annoys George Clooney that Paul Blart: Mall Cop was a better investment than Up In The Air? If you were to ask George, he would have one of his incredibly hot girlfriends beat you with Oscars and throw you into the street — fortunately, Kevin James will probably find you there and offer you a chicken wing.

Getting back to my point: Brad Pitt did a good job in Moneyball. The critics loved it. All anyone did the entire time was talk, so it’ll probably get a shitload of nominations. But it could have worked just as well with Hugh Jackman.

Assuming Hugh could have impressed the producer (Brad Pitt)

If the star power isn’t what drives movie profits, and quality obviously isn’t a factor, how can we tell which movies will succeed? If I knew, I would be whoring myself to a movie studio right now. But nine of the top 10 movies of 2010 were targeting kids or teens: six cartoons, Harry Potter, a Twilight movie, and one of the superhero films (Iron Man 2). Could the key to a financially successful film really be a lack of sex, blood, and profanity?

Okay, sabermetrics with movies might be a bad idea. We can’t allow the Hollywood number crunchers to cater exclusively to those big-spending eight-year-olds! Remember, Hollywood: Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s have been using sabermetrics for 10 seasons and haven’t gotten anywhere near a World Series. Sabermetrics doesn’t take into account a key ingredient to a quality product: team chemistry. It’s not enough to have the pieces in place — those pieces have to be assembled into a cohesive unit. There must be a filmmaking equivalent of that.

Pictured: cohesion, team chemistry. Orca tattoo optional.

So forget I said anything, Hollywood people. Get back to work filming those explosions — that Hungry Hungry Hippos movie isn’t going to license itself.