Have you ever wanted to stick it to the rich and make a lot of money at the same time? In 2021, a number of armchair investors and gamers did exactly that during the infamous GameStop stock squeeze. For a brief period, it looked like the proverbial little guy had taken on the hedge fund managers and mega stockbrokers — and won. Or at least until the stock bubble burst. This fall, Sony is dramatizing the entire experience in Dumb Money, and the first trailer has been released. Fair warning, this is a Red Band R-rated trailer, and there’s some very NSFW language ahead.
The short and condensed version of the GameStop stock squeeze is that the amateur stock buyers realized that the hedge funds were betting that GameStop would fail. That’s why the hedge funds “borrowed” stock in the company, and resold it with the knowledge that they would have to buy back the stock at a later date. By driving the stock price up to unsustainable highs, the average investors briefly made millions while costing the rich a fortune when they had to meet their obligations.
If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. As seen in the trailer, the veteran investors may have lost a great deal of money, but they were able to get the government to go after the amateur investors. And while some of the ordinary people struck it rich, others lost everything they had when the GameStop stock price came back to Earth.
Dumb Money features Seth Rogen, Paul Dano, Sebastian Stan, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley, Dane DeHaan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Anthony Ramos, America Ferrera, Myah’la Herrold, Nick Offerman, and Talia Ryder.
Craig Gillespie directed the film from a script by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, which was in turn based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network. Dumb Money will hit theaters on Friday, September 22.
