Capitalism is relevant to just about every industry. Many people are directly affected by it, specifically regarding how they are paid or how their money is spent. With every aspect of modern life revolving around money, from groceries to watching a movie, it’s always about money one way or another. Because we’re all invested in the topic of money, we are all gluttons for seeing the intricacies of the rich and their money-clad lives on the big screens. However, making a movie about money in the financial world has rarely been done. It’s a challenge few directors took, and even fewer pulled it off.
More and more people are interested in cryptocurrencies and will enjoy comparing BTC to USD or shorting positions at the right time. Nonetheless, making a movie about it isn’t the simplest thing, and here’s why.
4 Reasons Explaining The Challenge of Creating a Finance-Centred Movie
Creating a movie in itself is challenging, and it’s been described. Famous director, Alejandro González Iñárritu explains in an interview that filmmaking can give everything, but it can also take it back. Cinema history is filled with examples of crushing disappointments and surprising victories. Movies dealing with finance start with additional handicaps.
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Getting The Green Light from Producers
The cinema industry depends on box-office or streaming success. Millions are poured into a project, and it must pay off at least twice the initial budget to be considered a success. Producers will review the script and ensure there are stars in the casting and a competent director, and even then, success isn’t guaranteed.
Their goal is to get as many people to watch the movie as possible during its exploitation in theatres and after on streaming platforms. To achieve this, everything matters, and like with an ad, it must be something a “general audience” can relate to. Every significant success at the box office, namely The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short aren’t entirely focused on finance.
The Wolf of Wall Street is about a larger-than-life character leading an extravagant life and meeting his downfall at the end. Like other Scorsese movies, it’s about a twisted version of the American Dream and people falling into excess. The Big Short borrows from Scorsese’s playbook to create something comparable to a disaster movie, with those letting the catastrophe happen and others trying to prevent it.
However, in both cases, trading is secondary. It’s about the people making it happen. The characters are dealing with matters so far removed from everyday people that the director must take an angle to make them despicable in some way.
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Defining the Genre
Finance isn’t a genre of movie, and defining the genre of a movie is essential. Most creations discussing the matter depict real events in a romanticised way or take the documentary route. However, documentaries aren’t blockbusters, and biopics are risky because they deal with real people.
The genre also determines the budget. For instance, no producer is investing $200 million in a horror movie, but they may spend well over $300 on a superhero movie these days. The reason boils down to the project’s marketing potential. Among the most-anticipated movies of 2024, all projects are either sequels or derived from iconic franchises people will immediately identify with. It’s less risky and presents the best return on investment.
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The Fear of Losing The Audience
Most projects take US audiences as the referent when crafting the movie. If there’s something likely to upset the audience or lose them, it’s generally scrapped or replaced. That’s why there are few subtitles in US-made movies, and even foreign actors will quickly switch to English.
Discussing numbers has the same effect on this audience, according to producers. After a set time or beyond a given point of complexity, it’s more likely to disengage the spectator. Thus, a full-length motion picture showing Japanese candles, diagrams, and suits talking about percentages is very unlikely ever to see the light of day. They’re not exactly wrong, and the challenge resides in conveying crucial information without feeling like an exposition dump.
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The Trader Can’t Be a Hero
The complex world of finance can’t really be depicted as black or white. However, Hollywood seems to agree that, apart from the rookie of the team, every trader must be some sort of bad guy.
It’s understandable because recent events have shown traders as people responsible for the loss of billions. It’s not always true, of course, but movies often take inspiration from what is commonly accepted rather than what is true. They’re fantasies, allegories, and metaphors made by artists. Movies aren’t scientifically accurate recreations of the world we live in. Even documentaries have an angle and will emphasise the drama to captivate the audience.
Are There Good Movies About Finance?
Currently, outside documentaries, most movies don’t directly deal with finance. The Big Short is probably the closest to depicting it accurately. There are still entertaining movies set on Wall Street with big movie stars and solid directing. Still, they’re not the type of movies that can teach someone the ropes.
