Christian Bale may have gotten ripped to play Batman, but now he’s packed on 40 pounds to play Dick Cheney in “Vice,” Adam McKay’s dramedy biopic about the 43rd vice president of the United States.
“Are you even more ruthless than you used to be?” Steve Carell’s Don Rumsfeld asks Bale’s Cheney in the first trailer, which Annapurna Pictures dropped on Wednesday.
The new footage also features Oscar winner Sam Rockwell as an apparently dim-witted good-old-boy version of George W. Bush, who chews on a chicken wing while asking Cheney to be his No. 2 — and agreeing to hand over “mundane jobs, overseeing bureaucracy, military, energy and foreign policy.”
“Vice” follows the rise of Cheney from a little-known Republican bureaucrat to the most prominent voice inside the Bush Administration.
The film also features an all-star cast as Cheney’s Washington compatriots, led by Bale’s “American Hustle” and “The Fighter” co-star Amy Adams as Cheney’s wife, Lynne. The film also stars Tyler Perry, in a departure from his more slapstick comedic roles, as Colin Powell.
Like McKay’s previous film, “The Big Short,” “Vice” will inject comedy into serious political subjects, examining the impact Cheney had on both the beltway and the world in ways that are still felt a decade after he left office. Annapurna has set the film for release this Christmas.
Watch the trailer above.