Paul Dano melts Wall Street in the first trailer for Stupid moneythe upcoming Sony comedy about a real-life YouTuber taking on billionaire hedge fund managers with a short squeeze, or countering bearish trades, of GameStop’s stock.
“You’ve got rich dudes pissing their pants now,” Dano’s character, Keith Gill, is told in the trailer. The David vs. Goliath story has Gill and fellow retailers turning GameStop, the physical video game store, into a hot stock after major hedge funds took heavy short positions in the company’s stock, gambling that their price would continue to fall.
As major Wall Street funds fight back, Stupid money trailer is about Gill in the middle of an internet trading frenzy. With his life savings invested in the GameStop stock and at stake, his social media posts on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets forum begin to blow up online, and so does his life and the lives of everyone who follows him.
“You must testify before Congress. The game has changed,” Gill’s wife, played by Shailene Woodley, tells him at one point as politicians and regulators take note of his struggles on Wall Street.
The epic battle for GameStop led to AMC Theaters, the stock exchange giant, similarly becoming a meme stock after hedge funds took short positions expecting its price per share to fall, only to see how a short squeeze by retailers affected the shares of AMC surged, resulting in steep losses for hedge funds.
Stupid moneydirected by Craig Gillespie and will hit theaters September 22, also stars Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan and Seth Rogen, who plays Melvin Capital founder Gabe Plotkin.
The film, with a screenplay written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, is based on the book The antisocial network by Ben Mezrich.
Aaron Ryder of Ryder Pictures Company, Teddy Schwarzman of Black Bear Pictures and Gillespie share producer credits.
