Brad Pitt Bookends: ‘The Big Short’ to Close 2015 AFI Fest

Right after debuting the first trailer and announcing a December release yesterday, Paramount Pictures announced that The Big Short will be the closing night gala for the 29th AFI Fest in November. Last year’s closing night film, Foxcatcher, went on to garner five Oscar nominations, including Best Director, Best Actor (Steve Carell) and Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo).

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.

As previously announced, Universal’s By the Sea, written, directed and starring Angelina Jolie-Pitt and also starring Brad Pitt, is the festival’s opening night film. AFI Fest runs from November 5-12, 2015.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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