The Big Short film: Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Steve Carell feature in official poster

The first official film poster for director Adam McKay’s new dark comedy The Big Short has been released.

The poster features stars Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell and Christian Bale along with the tagline ‘this is a true story’.

The tagline rings painfully true: the film, set to be released in January, is based on Michael Lewis’s non-fiction book of the same name, which focuses on the men and women who benefited financially from the 2008 global financial crisis.

The cast discuss the movie, and working with McKay in this new featurette:

In the adaptation, Pitt, Gosling and co. will play four men from different walks of life who made large amounts of money by pre-empting the disastrous collapse of the US housing market.

Director Adam McKay is known for his work on comedies like Anchorman and TV show Saturday Night Live, and despite the seemingly dark subject matter, the film will be somewhat comedic too.

Ryan Gosling told Variety: “The great quality of McKay is that he has this beautiful way of being outraged by something without losing his sense of humor about it.”