The Big Short: Ryan Gosling explains the housing crisis with Jenga

Michael Lewis's The Big Short became a bestseller by giving a clear explanation of how the financial crisis happened. In this exclusive clip from the forthcoming film adaptation, we see Ryan Gosling's character, Jared Vennett, showing a room full of investment bankers how close the housing market is to collapse, using a tower of Jenga bricks to make his point.

Gosling’s character, who works for one of the big banks, ends his presentation by telling the assembled executives that he’s “standing in front of a burning house and offering you fire insurance on it.”

The Big Short follows four outsiders in the world of high finance, each of whom predicted the collapse of the credit and housing bubble in 2008 and made millions from the ensuing crisis.

As well as Gosling, the film stars Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Marisa Tomei. British actor Rafe Spall also features.

The film is directed by Adam McKay, most famous for making the stupendously silly Anchorman with Will Ferrell. As this clip shows, he's brought his comic sensibility to this ostensibly serious film, laying bare the absurdities of the banking system (as well as giving Gosling an outrageous fake tan and Carell a monstrous wig).

The last film to be adapted from a Michael Lewis book was 2011's Moneyball, also starring Brad Pitt, which won six Oscar nominations and grossed $110 million worldwide. The Blind Side, his study of a black teen adopted by a white family who goes on to become a highly successful American football player, was turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Sandra Bullock in 2009. It grossed more than $300 million globally.

The Big Short is released on January 22