Last January I wrote that with Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling costarring, Plan B’s big-screen adaptation of Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short” “could be an award-season contender when it pops in ’16 or ’17. Margin Call, Wall Street, Boiler Room…that line of country. But not — I repeat not — with Adam McKay, by any standard a low-rent comedy guy and commercial opportunist, directing and writing.” I still maintain that McKay’s earlier films (the two Anchorman flicks, Talledega Nights, Step Brothers) were crude and unfunny and aimed at animals, but I was apparently wrong about what he might do with The Big Short. Paramount has decided to release it platform-style on 12.23.15, which means they’re confident it’ll end up on a few Ten-Best-of-the-Year lists and perhaps even figure in serious Best Picture contention. (I still say McKay’s lowbrow aesthetic will get in the way of this.) With Short having taken the place of Oliver Stone‘s Snowden, which has been bumped into ’16, there are still four heavy-hitters opening in December — The Revenant, Joy, The Big Short and The Hateful Eight, not to mention Concussion, In The Heart of the Sea, Son of Saul and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sasha Stone‘s “if it hasn’t been seen in the early fall festivals it probably won’t be in Best Picture Contention” theory is being put aside for the time being.