In yesterday’s award-season chat between The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Stephen Galloway, topic #1 is Paramount’s decision to release Adam McKay‘s The Big Short, adapted from Michael Lewis‘ book, is late December, obviously with an aim of making some award-season noise a la The Blind Side and Moneyball, which are also Lewis adaptations.

Galloway: “I was fascinated by that. You know what I think it means? Paramount’s Megan Colligan obviously studied the awards landscape and concluded there’s no film that can’t be beaten.” (That means you, Revenant, Joy and Spotlight!) “It puts the studio right back in the awards game after it looked like they’d have no contender. Last year, as you know, their awards strategy took a bit of a turn after Interstellar sputtered, and Selma came out of nowhere to get a best picture nomination. I’m sure they learned from that — not least the danger of having a movie appear so late in the game that nobody has a chance to see it.”