Today, Sony is releasing their Wall Street-takedown movie Dumb Money in select theaters. The biographical comedy-drama examines the GameStop stock controversy that erupted in early 2021, when a host of small-time investors tried to beat Wall Street at their own game.
Here’s the background: In the late 2010s, GameStop was a company comprising brick-and-mortar stores that sold video games, and thus was struggling under people’s increasing dependency on online shopping.
GameStop’s stock price declined significantly as more financial firms and hedge funds bet on it failing, but then in mid-2019, a large asset management firm acquired a stake in the company, signaling to investors that maybe there was more value in the stock than the market soothsayers thought.
Enter the investing subreddit /r/WallStreetBets, which was known for occasionally taking on meme stocks and offering its users information on high-risk, high-reward transactions. Many members of the subreddit, led by an investing influencer named Keith Gill, began buying up GameStop stock. This led to what’s called a “short squeeze” — driving a stock’s price up so fast that those betting against the company were forced to sell their shares to cover the losses they were experiencing.
Things got pretty dramatic in Jan. 2021, when the short squeeze resulted in myriad hedge funds and other financial service companies losing billions. While much of the short squeeze was driven by small, personal investors, other funds also got in on the action.
By Jan. 28, 2021, the GameStop stock was valued at $500 per share, roughly thirty times what it was at the beginning of the month. At that point, many brokerages (such as Robinhood and other investing apps) stopped buying the stock, which triggered criticisms of market manipulation.
Congress then began investigating Robinhood and the various hedge funds that were involved. And, well, we won’t spoil the ending.
Why was Dumb Money given an R rating?
In case you were thinking of taking your kids to see a movie about the little guys sticking it to the Wall Street gatekeepers, you might want to put that plan on the back burner. According to IMDb, the film is rated R for “pervasive language, sexual material, and drug use.”
If you want more details about the rating, Kids-In-Mind.com has provided a rather elaborate post-mortem. They note that Dumb Money features:
“…a kissing scene, two fully nude men running on a track (their genital areas are not evident), many scenes of people arguing and feeling anxious about losing money, a scene of a man smoking marijuana and another of someone snorting cocaine, and over 100 F-words, and other strong language.”
The film’s cast includes Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Nick Offerman, America Ferrera, Seth Rogan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Sebastian Stan, and Shailene Woodley. And if you’re Stateside but not in a major city, don’t worry: The film releases wide on Sept. 29.
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