8 Reasons Dumb Money Bombed At The Box Office: Why The GameStop…

Dumb Money's story is too niche for general audiences, unlike The Big Short's more universally understood financial crisis narrative.

Dumb Money has a good cast, but it lacks star power compared to blockbusters like The Big Short, which featured Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt.

The 2023 movie faced major box office competition and couldn't be promoted properly due to the Hollywood strikes, contributing to its disappointing performance at the box office.

Dumb Money is the latest 2023 movie to bomb at the box office, and there are multiple reasons why. The new stock-trading dramedy follows in the footsteps of The Wolf of Wall Street, which chronicles the Wall Street crash of 1987 and Jordan Belfort's rise to power, as well as The Big Short, which covers the financial crash of 2008. The subject of Dumb Money is the shock success of the GameStop shares in early 2021. The movie centers on Keith Gill, the financial analyst and enigmatic Redditor who convinced the world to invest in GameStop and turned his $53,000 investment into $50 million.

Like any movie based on real-life events — especially ones about stock trading given how hard it is to make the subject entertaining — Dumb Money is completely dramatized. The result is a surprisingly engaging and entertaining two hours. The film received critical praise with a "fresh" 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it even has a slightly higher audience score. However, Dumb Money's terrible box office performance doesn't reflect that, as the film has made a mere $8 million worldwide as of this writing. That's a disaster for Sony, as the movie cost $30 million to produce. Nevertheless, the circumstances surrounding the movie's release prove Dumb Money didn't stand a chance.

Keith with Caroline driving in Dumb Money

The Dumb Money story is a huge deal, especially when it comes to the industry of stock trading, but the true events behind it flew over most people's heads. Everyone knew about The Big Short story because it dealt with the financial crisis of 2008, which affected everyone in some capacity. A story about drastic changes to a specific stock and subreddits is extremely niche by comparison. While the GameStop incident may have made headline news, it's still something few people understood or even cared about. Even then, The Big Short made $133 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo), which doesn't exactly make it a blockbuster hit.

Seth Rogen looks confused in Dumb Money

The Dumb Money cast is full of the most popular comedy actors and Academy Award nominees. Paul Dano is in the lead role with a well-known supporting cast including Pete Davidson and Sebastian Stan, but they aren't bankable actors. While Dano has had critically acclaimed roles in There Will Be Blood and 12 Years a Slave, neither he nor his costars have guaranteed audiences, unlike The Big Short's Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt. Rogen would have attracted huge audiences if Dumb Money was one of his stoner comedies, but the film doesn't share similarities with hits like Superbad and Knocked Up.

Paul Dano as Keith Gill in front of a green screen in Dumb Money

Dumb Money received positive reviews, earning an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. While that means that more than eight out of ten critics like the movie, the film's average score on Rotten Tomatoes is 6.9 out of 10, so barely any of the reviews were overwhelmingly positive despite Dumb Money's "fresh" score. As a result, Dumb Money wasn't the event movie that other 2023 films with similar "fresh" scores were, such as Evil Dead Rise and Barbie. Similarly, though Dumb Money has an 85% audience score, nobody has raved about how the film should be experienced theatrically. People could be waiting for Dumb Money to release on streaming.

Sebastian Stan sits behind a computer in Dumb Money

The current Hollywood strikes have been endlessly reported as the writers' and actors' unions — WGA and SAG-AFTRA — attempted to negotiate a fair deal with the AMPTP. The SAG-AFTRA strikes have prevented actors from working and promoting the movies they're in. Dumb Money was released in the midst of the actor's strike, which meant that Dano, Rogen, Davidson, and many others couldn't help market the film. Actors promoting the movie is one of the biggest aspects of a project's marketing, and without that, Dumb Money was destined to fail.

Seth Rogen drinks wine in Dumb Money

2023 has been stacked with huge potential blockbusters, but that has led to a surprising number of box office bombs simply because multiplexes are so overcrowded. That was the case with Dumb Money, which shared its opening weekend with A Haunting in Venice. While A Haunting in Venice also underperformed at the box office, the Disney movie was the clear winner between the two. That was expected, as it's part of an existing franchise and had better marketing. Dumb Money was sandwiched between other major movies, too. The Nun II hit theaters a week earlier, and Expend4bles was released a week later.

Paul Dano talking into a microphone in Dumb Money

The mid-2010s saw an increase in movies about financial crises, as The Wolf of Wall Street was released in 2013, and The Big Short followed in 2015. Both films were successes, especially the Martin Scorsese-directed Wolf of Wall Street, which made $406 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo). If Dumb Money was released in the mid-2010s, the film likely would have been a huge success too. However, while there was clearly an audience for stock-trading dramedies in the 2010s, there simply isn't as much interest in the subgenre as there used to be.

America Ferrera looks at her phone in Dumb Money

Dumb Money might have made just $8 million worldwide so far, but there's an asterisk next to "worldwide." The movie has only been released in North America, the UK, and a few European countries. It's still waiting to be released in 20 other territories, including Hong Kong, Russia, Australia, and Spain. The movie is still being released over the course of the next two months, with its final release happening in Argentina on November 9. As a result, millions of dollars more will be added to Dumb Money's worldwide box office gross — though it likely still won't be enough for the movie to break even.

Pete Davidson looks upset in Dumb Money

Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga was released on Netflix in September 2022, a full year before Dumb Money. The Netflix documentary is highly acclaimed and goes into way more detail about what happened with the GameStop stocks than the film. The documentary also features the real people involved. Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga is readily available for Netflix subscribers to watch at any time, and it's just as entertaining as Dumb Money. If viewers watch or have watched the documentary, there's really no reason to pay to see the movie in theaters, as it's essentially a dramatized and less informative version of Eat the Rich.