The Big Short Gets a Writer

Plan B’s production company has hired Adam McKay to adapt Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short. Michael Lewis, if you’ll recall, wrote Moneyball, which Plan B and Brad Pitt made into the Oscar winning film.  Hollywood Reporter indicates that perhaps the feud between Plan B and Paramount over 12 Years a Slave has reached a “detente.”

McKay is known for writing the Anchorman movies.  The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is about the housing bubble in the early part of the century when a whole lot of people were given crap loans to buy homes they then couldn’t afford months later.

The real story of the crash began 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.

Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar’s Poker. Out of a 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 time.

The #1 New York Times bestseller: “It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it’s essential reading.”—Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair