Dumb Money: Paul Dano's GameStop Movie Gets First Trailer

Sony Pictures Entertainment has released the first trailer for Dumb Money, an upcoming comedy starring Paul Dano that centers on the true-life story of how Reddit users banded together to inflate the cost of GameStop stock in order to stop a predatory investment firm from bankrupting the company in 2021. When gamers learned that the company was in serious danger because hedge fund investors were shorting the stock -- essentially, betting on GameStop to fail -- they decided to aggressively buy up all available GameStop stock, pouring money into the company and also putting the venture capitalists who bet against it deep in the red.

The film stars Paul Dano as a retail investor who led the charge to save GameStop, and Seth Rogen as a mega-trader who loses his shirt after the market turns on his firm abruptly.

Shorting a stock is high-risk, high-reward: if you think a stock is going to go down, you essentially borrow the stock you want from someone else's porftolio, and then resell it later and return the "borrowed" copy like nothing happened. The idea is, if an investor wants to short it because they think the company is in trouble, a broker will let the investor "borrow" a share. After an agreed-upon amount of time, the investor has to buy that share from the broker at the current market value, and the broker (or original owner) is still on the hook for whatever price they originally paid. 

So, if a stock is worth $10, and you short it, and it drops to $8, then you can pay the $8 and return it to your broker for the original $10. But if a stock is worth $10, and you short it, and then it goes up to $20? That means you have to buy it for $20, and return it to the broker for the original $10. Since stocks are based on supply and demand, the run on GameStop stock created a scenario where small retail buyers were creating huge demand for a stock, driving up the price, and causing institutional investors who had shorted the stock to have to pay huge amounts of money to keep up with the demand.

The GameStop phenomenon changed the way some retail trades are conducted, and led to investigations by the government, as trading apps like RobinHood suspended retail trading for GameStop in order to protect institutional investors who were taking a hit. Their claim was that buyers were intentionally inflating the cost of GameStop stock in order to manipulate the market, but buyers claimed that they were taking advantage of a stock they believed was undervalued, and it was the institutional investors' own fault if they got caught short. Retail investors also complained that those who got in on the ground floor, were suddenly unable to offload their stocks for a short-term gain, and ultimately ended up profiting significantly less than they could have when normal trading resumed.

You can see it below.

Here's the official synopsis for the film:

Dumb Money is the ultimate David vs. Goliath tale, based on the insane true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (yes, the mall video game store) into the world's hottest company. In the middle of everything is regular guy Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock and posting about it. When his social posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets rich – until the billionaires fight back, and both sides find their worlds turned upside down. Dumb Money also stars Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley and Seth Rogen. Directed by Craig Gillespie, written by Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo, based on the book "The Antisocial Network" by Ben Mezrich.

Dumb Money will release on October 20th.