A couple of TV veterans are making serious moves on the big screen.  First up, Steve Carell is in talks to join the way-too-handsome cast of the financial crisis drama The Big Short.  We learned yesterday that Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, and Christian Bale are all poised to star in the adaptation of the Michael Lewis book, which follows the key figures who played a role in the financial bubble that crippled the economy in 2008.  Anchorman and Step Brothers writer/director Adam McKay is making his dramatic debut with the picture, and THR reports that Carell is in talks to join the ensemble, adding at least one of McKay’s previous collaborators to the mix.

Hit the jump for more, including which characters the Big Short actors will be playing and a swell casting get for actor Joel Edgerton’s directorial debut.

Per THR, Carell will be playing Steve Eisman in The Big Short, a money manager who shorted subprime mortgages for FrontPoint Partners.  Gosling is set as Deutsche Bank trader Greg Lippmann, Bale will play Michael Burry, the founder of Scion Capital and one of the first people to see the crisis coming, and Pitt will take on the supporting role of Ben Hockett, a partner at Cornwall Capital.  Carell’s already proved with Foxcatcher that he has no trouble handling dramatic material, so it’s great to see him joining McKay for the filmmaker’s first drama.  Moreover, he and Gosling worked together before on Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Additionally, Deadline repots that Jason Bateman is set to lead the drama Weirdo, which will mark The Great Gatsby actor Joel Edgerton’s feature directorial debut.  Bateman will star opposite Rebecca Hall as a husband and wife duo who “seek to reinvigorate their friendship with a fresh beginning in a new town, only to have their life disrupted by a ‘friend’ from the past.”  Described as a “chilling and suspenseful journey”, the film is being produced by Blumhouse’s Jason Blum, so we can reasonably expect something rather disturbing.  Filming is about to begin in Los Angeles.

Bateman most recently wrapped his second directorial effort, the adaptation The Family Fang in which he co-stars opposite Nicole Kidman.  That film will likely be released sometime this year.

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Image via Warner Bros.