‘Big Short’ Director Adam McKay Joins Dick Cheney Biopic

Adam McKay will direct an untitled biopic about former Vice President Dick Cheney for Paramount with Brad Pitt on board to produce through his Plan B company.

McKay will direct from his own screenplay with the studio and producers aiming to shoot the movie in the spring. Producers are Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner through Plan B along McKay and his Gary Sanchez partners, Will Ferrell and Kevin Messick.

The producers collaborated on McKay’s “The Big Short,” which received Oscar nominations for best picture and best director. McKay and Charles Randolph won the best adapted screenplay Oscar for their translation of the book by Michael Lewis.

No actors have been cast in the project yet.

Cheney served in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush before becoming the CEO of Halliburton. He was VP between 2001 and 2009 under George W. Bush and was at the center of foreign policy as that administration pursued post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq along with “enhanced interrogation” programs against suspected terrorists.

In 2006, Cheney shot a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt. He has published two memoirs since leaving office and remained a strident critic of President Barack Obama.

McKay is repped by WME and Mosaic. The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.

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