Dear Wall Street 🖕
‘Dumb Money’ is the true story of ragtag Redditors taking down hedge fund investors.
From Craig Gillespie, director of the unbelievable true tales “Pam & Tommy” and ‘I, Tonya’ and based on the non-fiction book with an unbelievably long title, “The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees,” Dumb Money spins the sensational yarn of Reddit user Keith Gill, who inspired a short squeeze, or rapid increase of the price of GameStop stock using the subreddit r/WallStreetBets.
Everyday people flip the script on Wall Street and get rich by turning GameStop into one of the world’s hottest companies. In the middle of everything is Keith Gill, a regular guy who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock. When his social media posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets wealthy — until the billionaires fight back and both sides find their worlds turned upside down.
“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.” — Schuker Blum (Writer: Dumb Money).
The filmmakers interviewed Reddit investor participants, including Harmony Murphy, who inspired the character Harmony Williams in the film. Murphy is currently suing Robinhood, the app that controversially froze trades on GameStop. The filmmakers also used 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 as a source material. Mezrich was one of the executive producers on the film.
Paul Dano plays Massachusetts native Keith Gill, Shailene Woodley plays his wife Caroline, and Pete Davidson plays his brother Kevin. Trying to stop the Gills are New York Mets owner and hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, Citadel hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin, played by Nick Offerman, Robinhood financial services CEO Vlad Tenev, played by Sebastian Stan, and Melvin Capital founder Gabe Plotkin, played by Seth Rogen.
To sweeten the deal, America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, and Myha’la Herrold all play GameStop investors who take Keith Gill’s advice. Considering ‘I, Tonya’ (2017) and ‘The Big Short’ (2015) both won Oscars, ‘Dumb Money’ could be a contender for 2024 Academy Award nominations.
