The film is based on the 2010 book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, and shows how the 2008 financial crisis was triggered by the United States housing bubble.

[4] The film stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, with John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, and Marisa Tomei in supporting roles.

To explain financial instruments, the film features cameo appearances by actress Margot Robbie, chef Anthony Bourdain, singer-songwriter Selena Gomez, economist Richard Thaler, and others who break the fourth wall to explain concepts such as subprime mortgages and synthetic collateralized debt obligations.

The film consists of three separate but concurrent stories, loosely connected by their actions in the years leading up to the 2007 housing market crash.

In 2005, eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry discovers that the United States housing market, based on high-risk subprime loans, is extremely unstable.

His long-term bet, exceeding $1 billion, is accepted by major investment and commercial banks but requires paying substantial monthly premiums.

Eventually, the market collapses and his fund's value increases by 489% with an overall profit (even allowing for the massive premiums) of over $2.69 billion, with Fields alone receiving $489 million.

A misplaced phone call alerts FrontPoint Partners hedge fund manager Mark Baum (based on Steve Eisman), who is motivated to buy swaps from Vennett due to his low regard for banks' ethics and business models.

Vennett explains that the packaging of subprime loans into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) rated AAA will guarantee their eventual collapse.

As the subprime bonds continue to fall, Baum learns that Morgan Stanley, under whose umbrella FrontPoint operates, had also taken short positions against mortgage derivatives.

They accidentally discover a marketing presentation by Vennett on a coffee table in the lobby of a large investment bank (the characters address the audience stating that in reality they had heard about Vennett's plan through word-of-mouth from friends and publications), convincing them to invest in swaps, as it fits their strategy of buying cheap insurance with big potential payouts.

Below the capital threshold for an ISDA Master Agreement required to enter into trades like Burry's and Baum's, they enlist the aid of Ben Rickert, a retired securities trader who was based in Singapore.

They successfully make even more profit than Burry and Baum by shorting the higher-rated AA mortgage securities, as they were considered highly stable and carried a much higher payout ratio.

At the beginning of the scene in which the fictional Burry's investors confront him at his office, he is briefly shown standing near the front door, talking on the phone.

In 2013, Paramount acquired the rights to the 2010 non-fiction book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, to develop it into a film, which Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment would produce.

He told Creative Screenwriting, "In general it was trying to find the right tone that was slightly funnier than your average Miloš Forman comedy, which is all grounded character-based but not so satirical where you got Wag the Dog.

[8] On April 21, 2015, more cast was revealed by Deadline, including Melissa Leo, Marisa Tomei, Tracy Letts, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Byron Mann, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, and Finn Wittrock.

[22] On May 22, the production crew recreated the offices of failed investment firm Lehman Brothers in the lobby of the New York State Department of Financial Services in Manhattan.

The site's critical consensus reads, "The Big Short approaches a serious, complicated subject with an impressive attention to detail – and manages to deliver a well-acted, scathingly funny indictment of its real-life villains in the bargain.

[28] IGN gave the film a score of 8.6/10, praising its "energetic direction" and making "a complicated tale palpable for the layperson even as it triggers outrage at the fatcats who helped cause it".

[31] The New York Times' "UpShot" series stated The Big Short offered the "strongest film explanation of the global financial crisis".

[46] Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, and Brad Pitt won the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture.