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If the 2008 economic meltdown were a movie...
By Rachel Wolff
It was only a matter of time. In the wake of last year’s financial crisis morality tale, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and the Matt Damon-narrated documentary, Inside Job, comes a veritable bubble of subprime films. The Flaw, a documentary that examines the roots of the mortgage mess, and Margin Call, starring Kevin Spacey as the head of a foundering investment bank, both debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. HBO’s adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book Too Big to Fail is in the works, with Paul Giamatti as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment production company also has optioned Michael Lewis’s latest mega-best-seller, The Big Short.
This new genre might be perfectly suited for the big screen. “The financial crisis itself is intensely dramatic,” says The Flaw director David Sington. “You have interesting characters—people with different degrees of knowledge, different views about what’s happening. And it plays out in a very short time.”
In the spirit of beating Tinsel Town to the box office, Bloomberg Businessweek picked its ideal financial crisis movie cast by asking top Hollywood casting directors who should play the bankers, politicians, and economic gurus who dominated headlines during the implosion that was. Unlike in the real world, though, our hypothetical budget is unlimited. And, this being Hollywood, our story includes a role for Sarah Palin. This is show business, after all.
The Panel -
Sarah Finn
Casting credits: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W., Iron Man, Crash
Billy Hopkins
Casting credits: Precious, Nixon, JFK
Sarah Katzman
Casting credits: Wedding Crashers, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma
This new genre might be perfectly suited for the big screen. “The financial crisis itself is intensely dramatic,” says The Flaw director David Sington. “You have interesting characters—people with different degrees of knowledge, different views about what’s happening. And it plays out in a very short time.”
In the spirit of beating Tinsel Town to the box office, Bloomberg Businessweek picked its ideal financial crisis movie cast by asking top Hollywood casting directors who should play the bankers, politicians, and economic gurus who dominated headlines during the implosion that was. Unlike in the real world, though, our hypothetical budget is unlimited. And, this being Hollywood, our story includes a role for Sarah Palin. This is show business, after all.
The Panel -
Sarah Finn
Casting credits: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W., Iron Man, Crash
Billy Hopkins
Casting credits: Precious, Nixon, JFK
Sarah Katzman
Casting credits: Wedding Crashers, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma
