Director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step Brothers) has just received the cast of a lifetime: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt have agreed to headline his next film, The Big Short. Better yet, they’ll all be joined by Academy Award-winning actresses Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo, in addition to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts.
The film is based on Michael Lewis’ bestselling non-fiction book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, about the build-up of the housing and credit bubble and the savvy investors who shorted the market prior to its financial collapse in 2008. Screenwriter Charles Randolph (Love and Other Drugs) penned the script, which McKay then further adapted into a screenplay.
In addition to the A-list cast, the film will star Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Byron Mann, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, and Finn Wittrock. Pitt, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner will produce together as part of their Plan B Entertainment banner alongside Paramount Pictures and New Regency. Production is currently underway in New Orleans, Louisiana.
It would seem that’s not the only good fortune coming McKay’s way, either: Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige seems pretty antsy, no pun intended, on working with him in the future, as he told Collider:
“Adam McKay is in the running for everything. Adam McKay is a great, great writer and director. He did an amazing pass on the Ant-Man draft with Paul Rudd for us, and I didn’t know him before then. And we got to know him through that and liked him very much, and have met with him a number of times trying to find something else, so we’ve talked about a lot of characters with him.”
In other words, it’s a good time to be Adam McKay right now.