Moneyball 4K review
May 29, 2026- Permalink
Bennett Miller’s 2011 biographical sports drama Moneyball was adapted by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin from Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The film looks at the 2002 season of the Oakland Athletics and studies how GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) used sabermetrics to assemble a winning team for a much lower salary than the team’s wealthy competitors. Jonah Hill’s character, Peter Brand, introduces him to the mathematical study of stats that favours things like a team’s overall on-base percentage over individual success. Brand is based on Paul DePodesta, who asked for his name to be removed when he thought the script no longer accurately portrayed him. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays manager Art Howe, Robin Wright is Beane’s ex-wife Sharon, with Chris Pratt and Stephen Bishop as two of the players. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (we covered the red carpet) and went on to earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. Sony has now released the film on 4K and thanks to them and Allied Vaughn, I was able to take a look.
The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The video transfer is a standard dynamic range (SDR) presentation as apparently director Miller made the decision not to do high dynamic range (HDR) processing. The presentation has crisp detail on facial features, textiles and locations, and there is a nice film grain. The colour palette looks good from muted greens to the popping primaries and sunshine in the ballparks. There’s no crush or loss of detail in darker scenes. It may not have HDR, but I really don’t feel like we’re missing much here.
On the audio side of things, you have the choice of English, French, and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English, English SDH, French, and Spanish. The 5.1 mix does put us in the offices and locker room, but with Zaillian and Sorkin writing the script dialogue is always going to be the focus, so not getting an Atmos upgrade isn’t really a problem.
NOTE: Some outlets and consumers received an earlier version of the release that had an issue with the low frequency effects channel in the audio mix. Sony and Allied Vaughn set up a replacement program. If you have an affected disk, contact MovieZyng customer support. According to posts online, the fixed version has a UPC SKU of 043396647381.
The Moneyball 4K disc does come with a US-only digital code. Extras include deleted scenes, a Brad Pitt blooper reel, a piece where Michael Lewis, Bennett Miller, Aaron Sorkin and Billy Beane discuss the game, the novel and bringing it to the screen, a piece on casting the team, a look at recreating the games of the 2002 season, a piece on the screenplay adaptation, and a theatrical trailer.
Moneyball combines baseball, a great cast, and great audio and video with a nice selection of extras. While some 4K sticklers may decry the lack of Dolby Atmos and an HDR pass, this is still a recommended day at the ballpark.