Lock up your wives and girlfriends as Variety is reporting this trifecta of sexy men are looking to team up in the “The Big Short,” an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ bestseller that focuses on the financial crisis of the 2008 and beyond.
Gosling’s manager, Ilene Feldman, confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that her client is in talks to take a role while the other two and their respective managers declined to comment. Paramount Pictures is expected to develop the film and also remained silent on the rumor.
Michael Lewis and Bradd Pitt
The inclusion of Brad Pitt would certainly not be a tremendous shock to participate in the project having already starred in Lewis’ “Moneyball” as well as having produced the film through his company Plan B. The small budget film of 2011 was nominated for six Academy Awards and focused on the Oakland A’s success in Major League Baseball with a limited payroll by employing Sabermetrics. The term was first used by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is largely viewed as the most prominent champion and public face for the use of empirical baseball statistics.
The screenplay for the “The Big Short” is being written and directed by Adam McKay who is certainly moving outside his comfort zone of Will Ferrell comedies having written both “Anchorman,” and “Step Brothers.”
“The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” found its way to the New York Times’ non-fiction best seller list in 2010 and spent 28 weeks there. It focused on a number of the key figures in the creation of the credit default swap market and that bet against the collateralized debt obligation that saw them reap huge profits betting against the market beginning in 2007.
Michael Lewis book and the characters
The book profiled a number of these naysayers including Meredith Whitney who predicted the fall of Bear Stearns and CityGroup as well as hedge fund manager Steve Eisman, analyst Eugene Xu, the founders of Cornwall Capital among others. The book also focused on the big losers including: Howie Hubler, who lost $9 billion on a single trade, Merrill’s CDO manager Wing Chau, and numerous players at AIG which saw over $100 billion in losses.
Now word has been given as to which role the three might potentially be lining up to portray though presumably none of the men will be playing Meredith Whitney.
