LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!) – US cable network HBO on Monday unveiled the cast for its upcoming financial crisis movie "Too Big to Fail," led by Paul Giamatti as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Ed Asner as investor Warren Buffett.

Based on a book of the same name by New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Too Big to Fail" looks at the men and women on Wall Street and in Washington who managed the US economy as it went into a tailspin in 2008 fuelled by toxic mortgages.

The TV movie will centre around former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (played by William Hurt) and the events over a few weeks when he and his staff worked feverishly with Wall Street bankers and Washington policy makers to keep the US economy from slipping into another Great Depression.

Key to the story are characters like billionaire Buffett, known as "the Oracle of Omaha," who wields an enormous amount of influence on Wall Street, as well as current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner, portrayed by Billy Crudup.

Other important figures include Washington power players Michele Davis (Cynthia Nixon) and Jim Wilkinson (Topher Grace), former Lehman Brothers chief executive Dick Fuld (James Woods) and US Representative Barney Frank (Dan Hedaya).

The TV movie is written by Peter Gould and directed by Curtis Hanson, who was nominated for an Oscar for his film "LA Confidential" and won the Academy Award for adapted screenplay for the same movie.

Other key roles and actors include:

Ayad Akhtar as Neel Kashkari, Kathy Baker as Wendy Paulson, Michael O'Keefe as Chris Flowers, Tony Shalhoub as John Mack, and Joey Slotnick as Dan Jester.