Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: HBO has set William Hurt to play Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Curtis Hanson to direct Too Big To Fail, a dissection of the 2008 financial crisis and the power brokers who decided the fate of the world’s economy as the system teetered on collapse. Shooting begins in early fall. Peter Gould wrote the script, based on the book by The New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin who is a consultant on the project. Also consulting are Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

HBO had originally intended to make the film using their financial crisis book, All the Devils Are Here, as the basis for the film, but it wasn’t completed in time to be used as source material for Gould’s script. Hanson will be executive producer along with Spring Creek Productions’ Paula Weinstein and Jeffrey Levine. Carol Fenelon is co-executive producer and Ezra Swerdlow is producer.  It marks the first time Hurt and Hanson have made films for HBO.

Paulson is the central focus of a film that dissects how the co-dependency between D.C. and Wall Street nearly destroyed and then repaired the crisis. HBO will begin casting the other major players that will include Paulson’s successor Timothy Geitner, Lehman Bros CEO Richard Fuld and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.