It’s all star cast time, as Variety reports that Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling are teaming up for the financial drama, The Big Short. Pitt also has his producer hat on for the movie, which will be his second adaptation of a Michael Lewis non-fiction book, following Moneyball.
Part of the reason for the starry line-up isn’t just down to Pitt’s involvement and Lewis’ reputation, but because it will be one of the first studio movies directly about the financial crash in the 2000s. Many have noticed that despite the global ramifications of the credit crunch and its fallout, Hollywood has generally only dealt with it obliquely. Even those films which appear to deal with it, such as The Wolf Of Wall Street, have tended to look at individuals more than the machine itself.
However Lewis ‘book tells the story of the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s that led to the financial crisis of 2007-2010’.
Some have suggested Tinsel Town’s reluctance to handle it directly is due to the fact the studios rely on many of the institutions implicated in the crash for funding and financial ‘expertise’, and so haven’t wanted to be too critical. However Paramount is planning to back The Big Short.
It’s expected more major talent will sign up, as it’s planned as a Traffic-style ensemble tale, with lots of characters all who have a roughly similar sized role. However at the moment it’s not known currently involved actors will play.
Adam McKay, who’s best known for his comedy work with Will Ferrell (such as Anchorman, The Other Guys and Step Brothers), is set to write and direct. It’s not clear when it will shoot.
While Terrence Malick likes to take his time with films, there’s a chance we’ll be getting two 2015, as he shot a couple of movies back-to-back, the first of which, Knight Of Cups, will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. And now we have a trailer for the film.
Will Exodus: Gods and Kings usher in a new wave of big budget biblical epics? If it hits big numbers, between Exodus and Noah it may well convince Hollywood to put the many bible-based movies they’ve got into development into production.
It’s taken far longer than anyone expected to get the Steve Job biopic that Aaron Sorkin is writing ready to go, but now it seems to be finally moving forward, with Christian Bale signing on the star last week. Now he’s got a co-star, with 
Shortly after Steve Jobs died it looked like there was going to be a real race to see which of two biopics would make it to cinemas first. While the Ashton Kutcher starring Job is already over a year old, the one with a script by Aaron Sorkin is still in the works.
It’ll be interesting to see if Fox’s big-budget bet with Exodus: Gods And Kings pays off, taking the biblical story of Moses and giving it all the modern special effects it can handle. Now a new trailer has arrived, which certainly tries to sell it on the spectacle rather than religion.
Now that most of the biggest movies of the summer are in cinemas the studios can turn their attention to their major winter offerings, and few are bigger or more of a gamble than Fox’s $200 million dollar take on the talk of Moses, Exodus: Gods and Kings.