Paramount Enters the Oscar Fray with ‘The Big Short’ starring Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling

After months of test screenings, a few set pictures and virtually no word on if Paramount Pictures was going to have a film ready for Oscar season (shades of 2014) the trailer for The Big Short dropped today, with a Christmas release date.

Chock full of Academy Award winners (Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, Brad Pitt) and nominees (Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling), the film, directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step Brothers) looks to take aim at same crowd that ate up The Wolf of Wall Street except this story is about the other side. Based on the non-fiction novel by Michael Lewis “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” the film tells the story of the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s that led to the discovery of mass subprime fraud and the financial crisis of 2007-2010.

So how does this fit into the Oscar race? McKay certainly isn’t a director or writer that’s often thought of as the head of a studio’s main Oscar contender but his cast is. Between Bale and Carell we could see a big shakeup in the Best Actor race and Ryan Gosling could factor into Best Supporting Actor. I’ll say right now though that the wigs in this will not be making it into Makekup and Hairstyling.

Here’s the trailer: