The film "Dumb Money" is a dramatization of the true story involving ordinary Redditors who became investors and disrupted Wall Street. It is currently in limited theaters and will expand to more locations in the coming weeks. Directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, this comedy-drama weaves together multiple narratives to depict the GameStop saga of 2021. This story gained widespread attention during the Omicron variant days and originated from mega hedge funds investing in companies like the gaming retailer, hoping to profit from their declining stock prices. In "Dumb Money," characters played by Nick Offerman, Seth Rogen, and Vincent D'Onofrio represent these top hedge fund figures.
However, the story took an intriguing turn when working-class investors united on the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets and executed a short squeeze on the billionaire investors. This led to a rapid increase in GameStop's stock price, reaching a peak of $483 per share and causing significant losses for short sellers. In response, these individual investors were offered several bailouts, prompting criticism that the system favored the wealthy.
Lauren Schuker Blum, one of the film's writers, commented on the story's inspirational aspect, saying, "I think it's very easy to look around and see how broken, fragmented, and seemingly hopeless things are. But here was an inspiring story of an incredibly diverse and large group of people coming together around an idea."
In the film, characters portrayed by Paul Dano, America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, and others represent this diverse group of people who serve as stand-ins for everyday individuals. Some characters are based on real-life individuals, while others are fictional or composites inspired by the experiences of multiple investors.
The filmmakers conducted extensive research, including interviews with Reddit investors like Harmony Murphy (whose character, Harmony Williams, was named after but not directly based on her and is currently involved in a lawsuit against Robinhood, the app that controversially halted GameStop trades). They also drew from Ben Mezrich's 2021 book "The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees," with Mezrich serving as one of the film's executive producers.