Anchorman director Adam McKay has been tapped to write and direct a totally not funny movie about the global financial crisis. Not like Movie 43 “not funny”: In a departure for McKay, this one’s going to be a drama. Entitled The Big Short, the script will be written by McKay and based on the 2010 nonfiction book The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (a.k.a. the Moneyball guy). Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment is producing.
A scripted drama from an improvisational comedy director may seem like an odd fit, but McKay has been known to throw in some pretty sharp jabs at corporate America among the dick jokes. The dinner table scene from Talladega Nights comes to mind, and then there’s the credits sequence from The Other Guys, which included a series of damning graphics detailing the cost of the 2008 bailouts:
McKay says he and Plan B connected over the “breathless” quality of Lewis’ book. Plan B recently hit Oscar gold with 12 Years A Slave, and Moneyball was also an awards-season favorite. Could the guy who brought the world “Centaur Job Interview” be heading for an Oscar, too?