Two years ago, GameStop’s infamous shorting allowed armchair investors to cling to hedge funds driving stock prices to unsustainable highs. Some ordinary investors even made millions on the shares, while others lost everything they had made and more when the price returned to Earth. This saga has already been explored in documentaries such as GameStop: The Rise of Gamers. But this fall, Sony will release a dramatic retelling of these events in a film called dumb money.
Via Deadline, Sony set Friday, October 20 as the release date for dumb moneywhich is based on the book by Ben Mezrich The Antisocial Network. It is described as “a scathing, funny, and emotional portrayal of how a loosely affiliated group of hobbyist investors and Internet denizens crushed one of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds and turned the establishment upside down.”
How did it happen in reality? It’s simple, really. The aforementioned hobbyist investors realized two things: GameStop’s stock was undervalued, and they also realized that short sellers on various hedge funds could lose them a lot of money if they increased the share price. Short sellers often arrange to borrow shares and sell them temporarily with the inherent promise that they will have to buy back the borrowed shares at a later date. Essentially, they are betting that they can buy back the shares at a lower price than they sold them for. When GameStop’s stock price soared, hedge funds and other professional investors couldn’t easily meet their obligations. And they lost millions in the process.
dumb money has an impressive cast, including 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. For now, it is not known which characters they will play.
Craig Gillespie (pam and tommy) managed dumb money from a script by Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum. By placing the film in October, Sony may also be positioning it for an awards season run. But we’ll know for sure later this year.
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