It's worthwhile sometimes to stop and think about the real victims of today's tanking American economy. Like Sanjay Sanghoee, a hedge-funder who's running into trouble financing the film version of his corporate intrigue novel. The novel, Merger, is your standard tale of "an Indian corporate titan who begins a hostile takeover of a satellite company that transmits information from the C.I.A." Obviously, it'd make a great little indie film. So Sanghoee, none of whose Law & Order spec scripts were ever accepted, raised millions in private money from his hedge fund friends. They loved the book, and the pitch, and the fact that it was a movie made by a banker about bankers. But then, the mortgage crisis! Suddenly, not even a verbal agreement from Lara Flynn Boyle "to take a supporting role as a sultry henchwoman" was enough to keep the checks rolling in.
One of the problems is that Mr. Sanghoee wants to direct it himself. Also, it's a movie about Wall Street coming out during a recession. Also, it's a self-funded vanity project that will end in tears and massive debt. And films financed in this briefly fashionable style have all tended to do poorly. (Remember The Kingdom?)
A fund in Atlanta weighing a $7.5 million investment has cut back by $3 million. A $5 billion hedge fund group that was supposed to handle debt financing now has other priorities, namely liquidating 80 percent of its holdings.
Still, the world is full of suckers with money, and they're often willing to give it to fellow suckers with money. So this film will probably get made, in some fashion. And we'll all get to experience that increasingly common joy of watching bad things happen to bankers when it tanks. If we even notice it come out.
