Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, and Ryan Gosling Will Star in THE BIG SHORT
Talk about an A-list cast! Variety reports that Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, and Ryan Gosling will all star in a financial drama called The Big Short, which is being written by Ant-Man co-writer and Anchorman director Adam McKay. (For those who may find it strange that McKay - who generally sticks to the comedy genre - is involved in a serious drama about America's recent financial crisis, think back to the end credits of The Other Guys, in which McKay laid out how a Ponzi scheme works. He takes this stuff very seriously.)
Pitt's Plan B Productions will produce the film, which is based on Michael Lewis' non-fiction book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine." Lewis also wrote "Moneyball," another book Pitt turned into a movie. The film is rumored to feature a bunch of A-list actors in similar sized roles, with Traffic cited as an example. There's no start date yet, and no word about whether or not McKay will also direct in addition to his writing duties, but with Pitt, Bale, and Gosling leading the cast, this is going to be a huge movie.
The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff.
When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.
The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.