On Thursday 15 September, Sky Atlantic HD proudly presents Too Big to Fail, the critically acclaimed HBO adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s best-selling book. Centered on the epochal US banking crisis of 2008, the film stars Oscar® winner William Hurt, Oscar®-nominated actors James Woods and Paul Giamatti and Emmy® Award winner Cynthia Nixon.

Opening with real-life footage of former presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush deregulating the American banking system during their presidencies, the film gets inside the boardrooms of Wall Street’s all-powerful financial institutions as the ‘mortgage meltdown’ took hold.

Riveting in its examination of the mutually-dependant relationship between Wall Street and Washington, the film follows Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s (Hurt) fight to stabilise the economy in the face of a multi-billion dollar black hole caused by the exposure of the banks to toxic assets.

Replaying the actions of Wall Street’s top bankers are James Woods as Lehman Brother’s long-time CEO Richard Fuld; Bill Pullman as chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon; Matthew Modine as John Thain, CEO and chairman of Merrill Lynch and Michael O’Keefe as Chris Flowers, chairman and CEO of JC Flowers & co.

Too Big To Fail has received 11 Emmy® nominations including Outstanding Miniseries or Movie and Outstanding Lead Actor In a Miniseries or Movie (William Hurt). Described by Entertainment Weekly as “extravagantly entertaining”, Curtis Hanson’s film is a gripping and fast-paced examination of one of the biggest crisis to hit Wall Street since crash of 1929.