The Big Short

The Big Short is a 2015 Oscar-winning film adaptation of author Michael Lewis’s best-selling book of the same name. The movie, directed by Adam McKay, focuses on the lives of several American financial professionals who predicted and profited from the build-up and subsequent collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and 2008.

Published in 2010, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine was a loose sequel to Lewis' best-selling Liar's Poker, a chronicle of his work experiences at Solomon Brothers in the 1980s. Both non-fiction works offer a deep dive into the lives, workplaces, and psychology of several Wall Street professionals and the financial world.
Financial terminology and the chronology of the financial crisis are highly difficult for a lay audience to comprehend in a two-hour movie. The Big Short employs vivid, colloquial, and even humorous ways to illustrate and define the complex financial instruments and tools, from collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and tranches to credit-default swaps and mortgage-backed securities, that helped sink the global economy.