Dumb Money Footage Reaction: The GameStop Movie Flips The Script On Wall Street [CinemaCon 2023]
CinemaCon has well and truly kicked off in Vegas, with theater owners and press gathering to celebrate all things Hollywood. /Film's own Ben Pearson is in attendance at the convention, where there are a number of highly-anticipated premieres set to go down. Perhaps most notably, Andy Muschietti's "The Flash" will have its premiere at CinemaCon, but there is also plenty of sneak peeks from other upcoming projects.
Thus far, there's already been a host of new clips to come out of the convention, the latest providing a look at the Seth Rogen and Pete Davidson-led "Dumb Money." This retelling of how, in 2021, amateur Reddit investors caused GameStop stock to skyrocket is helmed by "Pam & Tommy" director Craig Gillespie. And with a frankly unbelievable central cast, anticipation for "Dumb Money" is about as high as GameStop's share price at the height of the pandemic. The film, adapted from Ben Mezrich's book "The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees," stars Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Sebastian Stan, and Pete Davidson — who seemingly couldn't be better suited to playing a group of Reddit-dwelling traders bent on bringing chaos to the stock market.
Mezrich's 2009 book "The Accidental Billionaires" formed the basis for David Fincher's "The Social Network," and if the cast and crew of this latest project is anything to go by, "Dumb Money" could prove to be yet another award-winning docudrama. Whether the machinations of the users of the WallStreetBets subreddit will prove to be as compelling as the founding of Facebook remains to be seen, but with the first footage being unveiled at CinemaCon, we've now got a much better idea of what to expect.
Dumb Money looks dumb good
So how does the story of this so-called stock translate to the big screen? Per what was revealed during the CinemaCon presentation, the movie is about an investor who "flips the script on Wall Street." The footage showcased kicks off with Seth Rogen in Miami, in January 2021 (bear in mind, this was just a couple of years ago, so we're not exactly being asked to transport ourselves too far back in our minds here). Rogen plays the founder of a hedge fund and, unlike your average business-y type, is wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He's talking on the phone with another money man as they watch the news and notice that something's happening in the stock market. This is all set to the sounds of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's "WAP."
News channels are buzzing about GameStop's stock rising rapidly, and we see a montage of a ton of people reacting to the news. We catch a glimpse of America Ferrara as a nurse, and (not hard to imagine) Pete Davidson smoking weed on a couch. Both of them see the news and freak out. Clearly, they bought some stock. Nick Offerman is seen playing Ken Griffin, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Citadel. We see some text that says he's worth a cool $29 billion. Rogen is confused by the stock rising, while Vincent D'Onofrio's character identifies that the change in the stock is being driven by a single man: a YouTuber named Roaring Kitty, aka Keith Gill (played by Paul Dano).
While the first couple of minutes of footage were described as a bit "dry," it should be noted that Rogen looks rather svelte and, to put it bluntly, hot. Dano, it's also worth noting, has long hair to capture the look accurately.
"Dumb Money"Â premieres in theaters on October 20, 2023.