Adam McKay, the Oscar-winning director of The Big Short, is to follow up that film with one about Dick Cheney, US vice president to George Bush for both of the latter’s terms of office.

According to Deadline, McKay has been working on the script well before Donald Trump’s election victory; in fact since The Big Short’s impressive Academy awards showing, where it was nominated for five Oscars (including best director), winning one for McKay and Charles Randolph for best adapted screenplay.

Cheney, who was born in 1941, was White House chief of staff during the Gerald Ford administration, and became secretary of defense under George HW Bush between 1989 and 1993, during which he oversaw the first Gulf war. During the Clinton presidency Cheney became CEO of oil services company Halliburton. He was picked as running mate for the 2000 election, and his term as vice president saw the 11 September attacks and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

McKay told Deadline he had long been intrigued by Cheney, but “once we started digging I was astounded at how much he had shaped modern America’s place in the world and how shocking the methods were by which he gained his power”.

This project follows the controversy surrounding a proposed production, since apparently scrapped, of Reagan, a high profile entry on the 2015 Black List of unproduced screenplays. Due to star Will Ferrell, Reagan was castigated by supporters of the late president for its supposed mocking of his Alzheimer’s; however, McKay denied reports it would satirise Reagan and blamed the president’s “deification”.

There is no word yet on casting for the new film, but Cheney was previously played on screen by Richard Dreyfuss in the Oliver Stone-directed W, the 2008 biopic of George W Bush.