The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)

In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio/Warner Bros. won a bidding war against Brad Pitt/Paramount Pictures for the rights to Jordan Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort made $1 million on the movie rights.[15][16] Martin Scorsese was considered to direct the film,[17][18] during pre-production, Scorsese worked on the film's script before working on Shutter Island. He describes having "wasted five months of [his] life" without getting a green light on production dates by the Warner Bros. studio.[19]

In 2010, Warner Bros. had offered Ridley Scott to direct the film, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the male lead,[20] but the studio eventually abandoned the project.[21]

In 2012, a green light was given by the independent company Red Granite Pictures imposing no content restrictions. Scorsese, knowing there would be no limits to the content he would produce, came back on board resulting in an R rating.[22] Red Granite Pictures also asked Paramount Pictures to distribute the film;[23] Paramount Pictures agreed to distribute the film in North America and Japan, but passed on the rest of the international market.[24] The rights to internationally distribute the film were acquired by Universal Pictures International (UPI).[25]

The film was alleged by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to have been financed by money stolen from the Malaysian 1MDB sovereign wealth fund by producer Riza Aziz who pled not guilty to charges laid in July 2019.[26] The film is part of a broader investigation into these illicit monetary movements and in 2016 was named in a series of civil complaints filed by the DOJ "for having provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund were illicitly siphoned".[27][28][29][30] To settle the civil lawsuit, Red Granite Pictures agreed to pay US$60 million to the U.S. government[31] with no “admission of wrongdoing or liability on the part of Red Granite”.[32] This settlement was part of a more expansive U.S. effort to seize approximately $1.7 billion in assets allegedly purchased with funds embezzled from 1MDB.[31]

According to Jordan Belfort,[33] Random House asked him to tone down or excise the depictions of debauchery in some passages of his memoir before publication, especially those relating to his bachelor party which featured acts of zoophilia, rampant use of drugs and nitrous oxide, and a particulary "disturbing" act which he recounted in Logan Paul's podcast.[34] Neither the published version of the memoir nor the film contain references to this,[35] and the film is even tamer in its depiction.

In the film, most of the real-life characters' names have been changed from Belfort's original memoir. Donnie Azoff is based on Danny Porush. The name was changed after Porush threatened to sue the filmmakers. Porush maintains that much of the film was fictional and that Donnie Azoff was not in fact an accurate depiction of him.[36][37] Former Donna Karan Jeanswear CEO Elliot Lavigne does not appear explicitly in the film, but an incident recounted in the book, in which Belfort gives Lavigne mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save him from choking to death, is similar to a scene in the film involving Donnie. The FBI agent known as Patrick Denham is the stand-in for real-life Gregory Coleman,[38] and lawyer Manny Riskin is based on Ira Sorkin.[39] Belfort's first wife Denise Lombardo is renamed Teresa Petrillo, while second wife Nadine Caridi became Naomi Lapaglia on-screen. In contrast, Mark Hanna's name remains the same as the LF Rothschild stockbroker who, like Belfort, was convicted of fraud and served time in prison.[40][41] Belfort's parents Max and Leah Belfort's names remained the same for the film.[42] The role of Aunt Emma was initially offered to Julie Andrews, who refused it as she was recovering from an ankle injury, and she was replaced by Joanna Lumley.[43]

In January 2014, Jonah Hill revealed in an interview with Howard Stern that he made only $60,000 on the film (the lowest possible SAG-AFTRA rate for his amount of work), while his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio (who also produced) received $10 million. Hill didn't care about his settlement though, and wanted to play Donnie Azoff so badly that he was willing to do whatever it took to get the part as it was his dream to be in a Scorsese film.[44][45][46][47]

Filming began on August 8, 2012, in New York.[48] Jonah Hill announced that his first day of shooting was September 4, 2012.[49] Filming also took place in Closter, New Jersey[50] and Harrison, New York. In January 2013, additional scenes were shot at a set built in an abandoned office building in Ardsley, New York. Scenes at the beach house were filmed in Sands Point, New York.[51]

Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has received seven Academy Award nominations for Best Film Editing, stated that the film would be shot digitally instead of on film.[52] Scorsese had been a proponent of shooting on film but decided to shoot Hugo digitally because it was being photographed in 3D; however, The Wolf of Wall Street was originally planned to be shot digitally despite being filmed in 2D.[53] Schoonmaker expressed her disappointment with the decision: "It would appear that we've lost the battle. I think Marty just feels it's unfortunately over, and there's been no bigger champion of film than him."[52] After extensive comparison tests during pre-production, eventually the majority of the film was shot on film stock while scenes that used green screen effects or low light were shot with the digital Arri Alexa.[53] The film contains 400–450 VFX shots.[54]

The Wolf of Wall Street uses animals including a chimpanzee, a lion, a snake, a fish, and dogs.[55] The chimpanzee and the lion were provided by the Big Cat Habitat wildlife sanctuary in Sarasota County, Florida. The four-year-old chimpanzee Chance spent time with actor Leonardo DiCaprio and learned to roller skate over the course of three weeks. The sanctuary also provided a lion named Handsome because the film's trading company used a lion for its symbol.[56] Danny Porush, Jordan Belfort's real-life partner, denied that there were any animals in the office, although he admitted to eating an employee's goldfish.[57]

The film set a Guinness World Record for the most instances of swearing in a motion picture. The word "fuck" is used 569 times in the film, averaging 2.81 times per minute. The previous record holders were Scorsese's 1995 gangster film Casino, which had 422 uses of the word, including in the voice-over narration, and the 1997 British film Nil by Mouth, in which the word was used 428 times.[4] The record has since been topped by Swearnet: The Movie, which says the word 935 times.

The film's distributor in the United Arab Emirates cut some 45 minutes off the runtime to delete explicit scenes of swearing, religious profanity, drug use, and sex, and "muted" dialogue containing expletives. The National reported that filmgoers in the UAE believed the film should not have been shown rather than being edited so heavily.[58]

According to copyright infringement tracking site Excipio, the film was shared over 30 million times via torrent sites and was the most illegally downloaded film of 2014.[75]

The Wolf of Wall Street was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 25, 2014.[76] On January 27, 2014, it was revealed that a four-hour director's cut would be attached to the home release.[77] It was later revealed by Paramount Pictures and Red Granite Pictures that the home release would feature only the theatrical release.[78]

The Wolf of Wall Street received positive reviews, with critics praising DiCaprio and Hill's performances, Scorsese's direction, and Winter's screenplay. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 277 reviews, with an average rating of 7.77/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Funny, self-referential, and irreverent to a fault, The Wolf of Wall Street finds Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio at their most infectiously dynamic."[79] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on 47 critics indicating "generally favorable reviews".[80]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine named The Wolf of Wall Street as the third best film of 2013, behind 12 Years a Slave and Gravity at numbers one and two, respectively. The movie was chosen as one of the top ten films of the year by the American Film Institute.[81] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said "it is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year."[82] The Chicago Sun-Times's Richard Roeper gave the film a "B+" score, saying the film was "good, not great Scorsese".[83]

Dana Stevens of Slate wrote that the movie did not work for her, labeling the film "epic in size, claustrophobically narrow in scope."[84] Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post argued that the story "wants us to be interested in characters who are dull people to start with, made duller by their delusions of being interesting because they are high".[85] Some critics viewed the movie as an irresponsible glorification rather than a satirical takedown. DiCaprio defended the film, arguing that it does not glorify the excessive lifestyle it depicts.[86][87]

In 2016, the film was ranked #78 on the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century list.[88] In June 2017, Richard Brody of The New Yorker named The Wolf of Wall Street as the 2nd best film of the 21st century so far, behind Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love.[89] In 2019, Brody named The Wolf of Wall Street the best film of the 2010s.[90]

The film received a "C" rating from audiences surveyed by CinemaScore,[91] a rating lower than anything else in theaters the opening week of the film.[92] The Los Angeles Times argues that the film attracted conservative viewers by depicting a more moral tone in its marketing than the film itself depicted.[93]

Christina McDowell, daughter of Tom Prousalis, who worked closely with the real-life Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter addressing Scorsese, DiCaprio, and Belfort himself, criticizing the film for insufficiently portraying the victims of the financial crimes created by Stratton Oakmont, for disregarding the damage that was done to her family as a result, and for giving celebrity to persons (Belfort and his partners, including her father) who do not deserve it.[94]

Steven Perlberg of Business Insider saw an advance screening of the film at a Regal Cinemas near the Goldman Sachs building, with an audience of financial workers. Perlberg reported cheers from the audience at what he considered to be all the wrong moments stating, "When Belfort — a drug addict attempting to remain sober — rips up a couch cushion to get to his secret coke stash, there were cheers."[95][92]

Former Assistant United States Attorney Joel M. Cohen, who prosecuted the real Belfort, criticized both the movie and the book on which it is based. He said he believes some of Belfort's claims were "invented", as for instance "[Belfort] aggrandized his importance and reverence for him by others at his firm." He strongly criticizes the film for not depicting the "thousands of [scam] victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars", not accepting the filmmakers' argument that it would have detracted attention from the wrongdoers. Furthermore, he deplores the ending—"beyond an insult" to his victims—in which the real Belfort appears, while showing "a large sign advertising the name of Mr. Belfort's real motivational speaking company", and a positive depiction of Belfort uttering "variants of the same falsehoods he trained others to use against his victims".[96]

In December 2013, prior to the film's premiere, the organization Friends of Animals criticized the use of the chimpanzee and organized a boycott of the film. Variety reported, "Friends of Animals thinks the chimp ... suffered irreversible psychological damage after being forced to act."[64] The Guardian commented on the increasing criticism of Hollywoods use of animals stating that "The Wolf of Wall Street's use of a chimpanzee arrives as Hollywood comes under ever-increasing scrutiny for its employment of animals on screen". PETA also launched a campaign to highlight mistreatment of ape "actors" and to petition for DiCaprio not to work with great apes.[65]

Various scholars and individuals have criticized the film as materialistic, encouraging greedy behavior, extreme wealth, and advocating for the infamous individuals portrayed in the movie. Christina McDowell, whose father, Tom Prousalis, worked in association with Jordan Belfort accused the filmmakers of “exacerbating our national obsession with wealth and status and glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior.” She continues to emphasize the gravity and timely significance of Belfort's crimes stating that Wolf of Wall Street is a "reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals".[97] In response to Leonardo DiCaprio defending himself from criticism, Variety journalist Whitney Friedlander describes the movie as “still three hours of cash, drugs, hookers, repeat”. Friedlander argues that the film is a “celebration of this lifestyle” and preaches that short lived extreme wealth and extraordinary experiences are superior to a societally normal behavior.[98]

There are also those like Nikole TenBrink, vice president of marketing and membership at Risk Insurance Management Society, who believe that the film is a “cautionary tale of what can happen when fraud is left unchecked.” She describes Belfort's business acumen, his talent in communicating and selling his ideas, and his ability to motivate others as offering “valuable lessons for risk professionals as they seek to avoid similar pitfalls”.[99] In an interview Josh Greenstein, Chief Marketing Officer of Paramount Pictures during the film's release, he depicts how Paramount Pictures and his marketing team attempted to portray the film as a film about the “overreaching greed of the ‘80s. Greenstein proceeds to argue that “everything in this film is still applicable to what is going on today, where people are in life and how they're feeling about the world.”

In an interview on London Real, Jordan Belfort commented on the film's depiction of himself and of Stratton Oakmont. In this interview, Belfort mentions that the film did an excellent job at describing the “overall feeling of the movie” stating that “the camaraderie, the insanity was all accurate.” Regarding his use of drugs, Belfort mentions that his actual habits were “much worse” than that of the film explicitly stating that he was “on 22 different drugs at the end.”[100]

Belfort also analyzes the major inaccuracies regarding the films oversimplification of Stratton Oakmont's gradual transition from advocating for “speculative stocks” in order to “help build America” to increasingly senseless and greedy crimes. During the interview, Belfort expresses that he “didn't like hearing” overly simplified and blunt depictions of his crimes because “it made me look like I was just trying to rip people off.” While unhappy with these practices, Belfort does acknowledge the cinematic benefits of these oversimplifications as “a very easy way in three hours” to “move the audience emotionally.”[100]

The Wolf of Wall Street grossed $116.9 million in North America and $275.1 million internationally, for a total gross of $392 million,[2] making it Scorsese's highest-grossing film worldwide.[101] In North America, the film opened at number five in its first weekend, with $19.4 million in 3,387 theaters, behind The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, and American Hustle.[102] In Australia, it is the highest grossing R-rated film, earning $12.96 million.[103]

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Adapted Screenplay for Winter, Best Actor for DiCaprio, and Best Supporting Actor for Hill. It was also nominated for four BAFTAs, including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, and two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. DiCaprio won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.