It is true that an astonishing number of people, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve himself, continued to ignore the housing market bubble and even to deny it could happen – though, as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Laureate Paul Krugman has pointed out in his review, more people noticed there was a problem than the tiny group who are shown here.

The film is accurate about the historical trajectory of events. Markets: Quietly and separately, all these men spot that there is a problem with mortgage securities, particularly those resting on the unfettered inflation of the risky subprime market. Ben Rickert ( Brad Pitt) is based on Ben Hockett, and has a similar apocalyptic outlook. Jared Vennett ( Ryan Gosling) is based on Deutsche Bank bond salesman Greg Lippmann: “He wore his hair slicked back, in the manner of Gordon Gekko,” wrote Lewis, “and the sideburns long, in the fashion of an 1820s Romantic composer or a 1970s porn star.” The film’s Vennett sports disappointingly inadequate sideburns but has a penchant for the same braggadocio as Lippmann. Mark Baum (Steve Carell) is based on hedge fund manager Steve Eisman the movie keeps his Jewish background and straight talking. Michael Burry ( Christian Bale) really was a stock market investor at Scion Capital he wore no shoes and listened to thrash metal in the office. The Big Short’s screenplay is pretty faithful to Lewis’s book in its sharpness, wit and tone, and focuses on the same characters even though most have been semi-fictionalised and renamed. Lewis is one of the few people who can write about complicated finance or analytics and make it both comprehensible and gripping – as in his breakthrough book Liar’s Poker and his bestseller Moneyball (which was also adapted into a movie starring Brad Pitt). Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures via APĬharacters: Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, the nonfiction book on which the film is based, was a bestseller when it came out in 2010. Penchant for braggadocio … Ryan Gosling, bottom right, as Jared Vennett.

The big short characters