Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling to Team Up For World’s Hunkiest Movie

The staff at People Magazine is swooning already.

When you think of Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling, you don’t exactly think of high comedy—does Christian Bale even smile?—yet, the three have signed on to star in ‘The Big Short’, a new film based on a script by ‘Anchorman’ and ‘Step Brothers’ director Adam McKay, who may also direct. Before you get too excited at the prospect of stone-faced Method actors Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling co-starring in a goofy comedy, spoiler alert: it’s not a comedy.

‘The Big Short’ is based on the book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis, who not-so-coincidentally wrote the book ‘Moneyball’ was based on. The film will tell the story of creation of the credit default swap market during the 2000s that led to the financial crisis of 2007-2010. Pitt and his Plan B production company are putting the film together at Paramount. If Plan B’s recent history is any indication (‘Selma’ this year and ‘12 Years a Slave’ last year), ‘The Big Short’ could be a big player at next year’s Oscars.

McKay turned down the offer to direct Marvel’s ‘Ant-Man’, at the time stating that he had “commitments” to other projects. Since then, nothing formal has been announced as to McKay’s next project, but it’s possible he’s been working in tandem with Pitt to bring this project to the big screen. Besides having an innate knack for comedy, McKay has also been passionate about politics and finance reform on his Twitter feed and has produced a number of documentaries on the subject.

It’s unclear when ‘The Big Short’ would begin filming, but Variety says that Pitt is “passionate” about the project, and with a cast like this, we’d have to think Paramount is as well.