Billionaire hedge fund managers go Hollywood in ‘Dumb Money’

The script — adapted by two former Wall Street Journal reporters — has changed somewhat since the draft reviewed by Bloomberg, and the final cut of the movie is a fraction of its length with several scenes shortened or edited out, according to a person with knowledge of the film, who asked not to be identified.

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A representative for distributor Sony Pictures declined to comment. Dumb Money mostly follows Gill’s story as well and those of a handful of his impassioned followers. Every now and then, the script cuts to the hedge fund managers questioning the intelligence of the retail crowd, and just how long they can possibly hold their positions.

“Retail traders always lose,” the fictionalised Plotkin tells Cohen after discovering the videos touting GameStop on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum.

“Guess these guys are just deciding to ignore all the obvious secular trends. Or they’re…illiterate?”

“You’re shorting more, aren’t you?” the Cohen character responds while Plotkin clacks away on his keyboard.

The script jumps forward and back in time from the 2021 congressional hearing, when Griffin and Plotkin had to defend their business practices during a barrage of questioning from politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eviscerating payment for order flow.

While it includes some hedge fund manager tropes — Cohen’s character is often in repose getting a massage in his office, there’s some golfing, and Plotkin’s character gripes about delays in building his tennis court — there are surprises. The script offers a tender portrayal of Plotkin — whose hedge fund was named after his grandfather who ran a convenience store — as a family man doing the dishes.

His character is shown observing shabbat with his young children, reading them bedtime stories and leaning on his supportive wife Yaara as his fund began to collapse.

(Plotkin shuttered Melvin last year after it was unable to rebound from the ordeal. He’s now part of a group buying the National Basketball Association’s Charlotte Hornets from Michael Jordan.)

And at least one other interaction rings true. The script has avid art collector Cohen, whose firm Point72 Asset Management is in a talent war with Griffin’s Citadel in real life, blasting his competitor.

“He stole five analysts from me — mediocre ones, by the way,” he tells Plotkin. “Oh, and two paintings.”

Bloomberg

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