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Watch Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale Team Up in 'The Big Short'

Hindsight is 20/20. But in the case of The Big Short, starring Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, and Steve Carell, it's their foresight that gets them in deep.

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As you can see in the first trailer (above), the actors play a group of small-time financial whizzes who realise the housing market is on the verge of collapse and who race to cash in on the coming catastrophe.

Written and directed by Adam McKay, who is best known for such Will Ferrell comedies as Anchorman and Step Brothers, The Big Short is based on a nonfiction book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, Moneyball).

Exclusive: Steve Carell (L) and Ryan Gosling (R) in 'The Big Short'. Photo: Paramount Pictures
Exclusive: Steve Carell (L) and Ryan Gosling (R) in 'The Big Short'. Photo: Paramount Pictures

McKay spoke to Yahoo Movies about his career-first drama (what he calls a "natural" progression from his typically slapstick comedic fare), how he landed his A-list cast (which also features Oscar winners Melissa Leo and Marisa Tomei, and a key cameo from Selena Gomez!), and how he managed to get them all to wear outrageous hairdos.

According to McKay, Pitt’s production company, Plan B, sparked to the idea of the film, but Pitt wasn’t originally going to act in it. That all changed once he read McKay's rework of Charles Randolph’s initial script (Randolph also has a writing credit).

"[Pitt] zeroed in on the role of Ben pretty quickly," McKay says. "He just loved the vibe of that guy, how he seems far away, paranoid, and just thought there was some real fun to be had with it."

From there, Bale, Gosling, and Carell signed on within weeks and the production was off. However, the filmmaker only had about six weeks to prep to accommodate his ensemble.

"It was insanity because of everyone’s schedules,” explains McKay.

Pitt, Gosling, and Bale -- three bona fide Hollywood hunks -- played against type.

Exclusive: Christian Bale in 'The Big Short'. Photo: Paramount Pictures
Exclusive: Christian Bale in 'The Big Short'. Photo: Paramount Pictures

"We puncture that idea of the stereotypical leading man," McKay explains. "These are outsiders, oddballs. In meetings they don’t make eye contact because they’re nervous. They’re the ones with the right answers.”

That’s especially what drew Bale in, says the director. "He liked turning an introvert into a leading man.”

To achieve their oddball looks, “they are wearing varying degrees of wigs… except for Pitt," says McKay, adding how surprised he was with the amount of coverage Gosling’s darker 'do got in the press. "They thought he dyed his hair, but it was a wig."

Like most McKay movies, there was improvisation on set, especially from Carell. But not to the same level as a Farrell flick. "About one-third as much as the comedies I do," estimates McKay.

The project owes its genesis to The Other Guys, McKay's 2010 action comedy starring Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, that also involves the financial crisis of '08.

"The comedy was so big that no one knew we were covering that until the end credits," he says of graphs and charts of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, exorbitant executive salaries, and other contributors to the money meltdown that played out as the credits rolled.

Adam McKay. Photo: Paramount Pictures
Adam McKay. Photo: Paramount Pictures

McKay grew obsessed with the subject, consulting top economists to get the "squint-your-eyes version of it" and reading books. After he wrapped Guys he continued his study, inspired, in part, by how the issue touched him personally.

"My dad lost his house for starters. I was getting emails after it hit -- five, six emails a month from old friends and acquaintances asking for jobs or if I could help."

McKay adds another example: the company he runs with Ferrell, Funny or Die, was also forced to downsize.

"It was cataclysmic," he says of the meltdown's global effects. "And it hasn't ended. We're still in the middle of those ripples and this giant asset bubble we're in right now is still going on. [The Big Short] is not just some historical snapshot."

McKay didn't want to bore audiences with monologues about collaterised debt obligations and credit default swaps.

"I didn't want it to feel monolithic and austere, instead it need to be human and rumpled," he says. Unlike other movies that cover the "the moment of discovery and fraudulent cover-ups" of the financial crisis -- like J.C. Chandor's 2011 drama Margin Call or the 2010 documentary Inside Job -- McKay says, "I wanted fraud to be a character in the movie. That was the goal." He found the perfect "populist" source material in Lewis's meticulously researched 2010 bestseller.

Originally slated to open in 2016, The Big Short is moving up to Dec. 11, 2015 in the US, presumably to qualify for an Oscar run.

Meriah Doherty writes for Yahoo Movies.