Paramount jumps into Oscar race: ‘The Big Short’ stars Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell

Paramount announced Tuesday that “The Big Short” — a film based on Michael Lewis‘ bestseller about four high-finance fellows (Christian BaleSteve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt) who foresaw an opportunity with the impending collapse in 2008 of the credit and housing bubble — will be released this year rather than next. Adam McKay, best-known for his collaborations with Will Ferrell on the “Anchorman” franchise, handled the helming and co-wrote the script with Charles Randolph. After unspooling at the closing night of the AFI filmfest on Nov. 12, it will get a limited release on Dec. 11 before going wide on Dec. 23. 

Dish all the Oscar races in our red-hot forums with Hollywood insiders

Carell plays hedge fund manager Steve Eisman, Gosling is Deutsche Bank trader Greg Lippmann, Pitt is Cornwall Capital partner Ben Hockett and Bale is Dr. Michael Burry, an ex-neurologist who founded Scion Capital. Also featured in the cast are a couple of Supporting Actress Oscar champs — Melissa Leo (“The Fighter”) and Marisa Tomei (“My Cousin Vinnie”) — as well as Jeremy Strong (“Selma”) and recent Emmy nominee Finn Wittrock (“American Horror Story: Freak Show”). 

Pitt, whose Plan B shingle is producing this picture, has done well with Lewis already. He produced and starred in 2011 Best Picture nominee “Moneyball,” based on Lewis’ bestselling “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.” The journalist turned author also penned “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” the film version of which won Sandra Bullock the Best Actress Oscar back in 2009. That blockbuster also contended for Best Picture.

Parmount also has a strong Oscar contender in Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion animated feature “Anomalisa#.” The studio acquired this crowd-funded film after it wowed audiences at the Venice and Toronto filmfests. It is scheduled for limited release on Dec. 30. 

Below, take a look at the trailer for “The Big Short.” 

Then make your Oscar predictions starting with Best Picture using the menu to the right or at the bottom of this post. You could earn a place of honor on our leaderboard and a starring role in next year’s Top 24 Users (the two dozen folks who do the best predicting this year’s Oscar nominations).

Last year, our Top 24 Users led the way with an accuracy rate of 76.67% when it came to predicting the Oscar nominations. Next up were Gold Derby’s in-house team of Editors with 74.44%, followed by the Experts with 71.11% and all Users with 68.09%. (Click on any of these groups to see what they got right and wrong last year.)

Which group will be victorious this year? Meet the guy who won our contest to predict the Oscar nominations last year — and learn how he did it and how you can be our next Gold Derby superstar.

As some of our Users turn out to be our smartest prognosticators, it’s important that you give us your predictions. Your picks influence our Users racetrack odds, which also factor into our official combined odds.

More News from GoldDerby

Loading