The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, released in 2013, asks its audience to laugh along with a man who defrauded investors. The film is adapted from the memoir of the stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort, in his fifth collaboration with Scorsese. The result is a sprawling comedy of excess about a real securities fraud. Viewers have argued ever since over whether it mocks its hero or admires him. How does a penny-stock salesman build a firm on deception? Why did so many real people need new names on screen? What does it take to get a film this crude into theaters around the world? And what happened when investigators began asking where the film's own money came from?

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• 2. The Pump and Dump

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  In 1987, twenty-five-year-old Jordan Belfort took a job as a stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild, working under a boss named Mark Hanna. The film shows a trading floor soaked in drugs, where the real aim was to make the brokers themselves rich. Belfort lost the job after Black Monday, the largest one-day stock market drop since the crash of 1929. He then joined Investor's Center, a boiler room on Long Island that specialized in pink sheet penny stocks. His aggressive pitching, and the high commissions on those stocks, made him a small fortune.

  A neighbor named Donnie Azoff became Belfort's partner when the two decided to open a brokerage of their own. They recruited Belfort's childhood friends Robbie Feinberg, Alden Kupferburg, Nicky Koskoff, Chester Ming and Toby Welch, along with a drug pusher named Brad Bodnick. Belfort trained the group in the "hard sell." Their offices were a former auto repair shop.

  Their method was a pump and dump. The brokers talked up a stock with misleading claims, which pushed its price artificially high. When the schemers sold their overvalued shares, the price plummeted. Everyone who had bought at the inflated price was left holding stock worth far less than they paid. In 1989, Belfort gave the firm the respectable-sounding name Stratton Oakmont to cloak what it was doing.

  A Forbes exposé then handed Belfort a nickname. It called him "The Wolf of Wall Street" and described him as "a sort of twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers." Belfort was at first enraged. Then hundreds of ambitious young financiers flocked to the company, and Stratton Oakmont moved into bigger and bigger offices.

  In 1991, Belfort divorced his wife Teresa after she discovered his affair with the lingerie designer Naomi Lapaglia, and he married Naomi. By then the SEC and the FBI had begun investigating Stratton Oakmont.

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• 3. Quaaludes and Wiretaps

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  In 1993, Belfort illegally made $22 million in three hours by securing the IPO of Steve Madden, Ltd. The company was founded by the women's shoe designer Steve Madden, a childhood friend of Donnie Azoff. The windfall drew the FBI's attention even further. Belfort tried to bribe the agent, Patrick Denham, and failed. Looking for a safe place for his money, he opened a Swiss bank account with a corrupt banker named Jean-Jacques Saurel. The account was in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma, a British citizen outside the easy reach of American authorities. Brad Bodnick's Swiss-Slovenian wife, Chantalle, and her family held Swiss passports, so they carried the cash into Switzerland.

  A public argument over a money exchange got Brad arrested, while Donnie escaped. Donnie then told Belfort he had found some Lemmon 714 quaaludes, which Belfort called "the holy grail" of drugs. The two swallowed pills at Belfort's home and felt nothing. They assumed the pills had expired, so they took the rest of the supply.

  Then the private investigator Bo Dietl phoned and insisted on talking over a payphone. Belfort drove to a local country club and learned that the FBI was wiretapping his phones. Midway through the call the quaaludes kicked in. Extremely inebriated, Belfort struggled to get home in his Lamborghini Countach. Inside, he found Donnie on the phone and nearly strangled him with the cord. Donnie then choked on a piece of meat, and Belfort swallowed a large amount of cocaine before giving him the Heimlich maneuver. The next day the police arrived to say his car had been trashed.

  Belfort's father, Max, advised him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while a lawyer negotiated a deal to keep him out of prison. Midway through his farewell speech, Belfort could not bring himself to quit and talked himself into staying. His friends and employees were relieved. His father was dismayed.

  In 1996, Belfort, Donnie and their wives were on a yacht trip to Italy when they learned that Aunt Emma had died. Fearing for the money in her name, Belfort decided to head for Switzerland, forge her signature on a document, and then go to London for the funeral. To avoid border patrols, he ordered his yacht captain, Ted, to sail to Monaco. The yacht capsized in a storm. After the rescue, the plane meant to carry them to Geneva was destroyed when a seagull flew into the engine. Belfort took this as a sign from God and tried to sober up.

  By 1998, Saurel and Koskoff had been arrested for an unrelated crime, and Saurel informed the FBI about Belfort as part of a plea bargain. With the evidence overwhelming, Belfort agreed to gather evidence from his colleagues in exchange for leniency. Naomi, seeing his weakened finances, told him she was divorcing him and taking full custody of their children. In a cocaine-fueled rage, Belfort punched her and tried to drive away with their daughter, but he crashed in the driveway.

  A note slipped to Donnie Azoff undid everything. Belfort wore a wire to work yet used the note to warn his friend, and the FBI found it. Agents arrested Belfort, then raided and shut down Stratton Oakmont. Despite breaching his deal, he received a reduced sentence of 36 months in a minimum security prison for his testimony. He was released in 2000 after serving 22 months. Afterward he made his living hosting seminars on sales techniques, using the same test he had given his founding partners.

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• 4. Names and Casting

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  Danny Porush threatened to sue the filmmakers and Paramount, and that threat is why Donnie Azoff carries a different name on screen. Porush maintains that much of the film is fictional and that Azoff is not an accurate depiction of him. Most of the real-life characters were renamed from Belfort's memoir. The FBI agent Patrick Denham stands in for the real Gregory Coleman, and the lawyer Manny Riskin is based on Ira Sorkin. Belfort's first wife, Denise Lombardo, became Teresa Petrillo. His second wife, Nadine Caridi, became Naomi Lapaglia.

  Elliot Lavigne, a former Donna Karan Jeanswear CEO, never appears in the film. An incident from the book is nonetheless echoed in a scene with Donnie. In it, Belfort gives mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save Lavigne from choking to death. Two names stayed exactly as they were. Mark Hanna, like Belfort, was a convicted stockbroker who served time in prison, and Belfort's parents, Max and Leah, kept their own names.

  Jonah Hill plays Azoff, Margot Robbie plays Naomi, Matthew McConaughey plays Hanna, and Kyle Chandler plays Denham. Casting the smaller parts took some turns. The role of Aunt Emma was first offered to Julie Andrews, who declined because she was recovering from an ankle injury. Joanna Lumley took the part instead. Olivia Wilde auditioned for Naomi but was rejected as "too old," even though DiCaprio is a decade older. The role went to Robbie.

  Bo Dietl appears as himself, and the real Jordan Belfort plays the Auckland Straight Line host at the end of the film. Jake Hoffman plays Steve Madden, and Fran Lebowitz appears as The Honorary Samantha Stogel. Edward Herrmann supplies the voiceover for the Stratton Oakmont commercial that opens the film. Thomas Middleditch plays a Stratton broker whose goldfish is eaten by Donnie for slacking off. Spike Jonze appears, uncredited, as Dwayne, the head of the Long Island brokerage that introduces Belfort to penny stocks. Steve Buscemi turns up through archive footage from an episode of The Equalizer.

  In January 2014, Jonah Hill told Howard Stern in an interview that he had made only $60,000 on the film. That was the lowest possible SAG-AFTRA rate for his amount of work. DiCaprio, who also produced, received $10 million.

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• 5. Making the Film

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  In 2007, DiCaprio and Warner Bros. won a bidding war for the rights to Belfort's memoir, and Belfort made $1 million from the deal. Scorsese had worked on the script and was considered to direct. He left the project to make Shutter Island, released in 2010. That same year Warner Bros. offered the director's chair to Ridley Scott, with Brad Pitt as Belfort, but the studio eventually abandoned the film.

  In 2012, the independent company Red Granite Pictures greenlit the project without content restrictions, and Scorsese soon returned. Red Granite asked Paramount Pictures to distribute. Paramount agreed to handle the United States, Canada and Japan. Red Granite kept the international rights and sold them through independent distributors. Universal Pictures released the film in some European countries, and Roadshow Films handled Australia and New Zealand.

  Belfort has said that the publisher Random House asked him to tone down the debauchery in his memoir before publication. The main target was his bachelor party, which featured bestiality, along with heavy use of drugs such as nitrous oxide. Neither the published memoir nor the film contains those references.

  Filming began on the 8th of August 2012 in New York City. Jonah Hill announced on Twitter that his own first day of shooting was the 4th of September 2012. The crew also worked in Closter, New Jersey, and Harrison, New York. Vitamin D powder stood in for cocaine. Hill was hospitalized with bronchitis after snorting large quantities of it.

  Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's longtime editor, has received seven Academy Award nominations and one win for Best Film Editing. She said the film would be shot digitally rather than on film. Scorsese had long championed film, but he had shot Hugo digitally because it was photographed in 3D. Schoonmaker was disappointed. "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." After extensive comparison tests in pre-production, most of the film was shot on film stock. Green screen scenes and low-light scenes, mainly at night, used the digital Arri Alexa camera system. The finished film contains 400 to 450 VFX shots.

  A chimpanzee, a lion, a snake, a fish and dogs also worked on the film. The Big Cat Habitat wildlife sanctuary in Sarasota County, Florida, supplied the chimpanzee and the lion. The four-year-old chimpanzee, Chance, spent time with DiCaprio and learned to roller skate in three weeks. The lion, named Handsome, was there because the trading company in the story used a lion as its symbol. Danny Porush denied that animals were kept in the office, though he admitted eating an employee's goldfish.

  In December 2013, before the premiere, the organization Friends of Animals organized a boycott of the film. Variety reported that the group believed the chimp had "suffered irreversible psychological damage after being forced to act." The Guardian saw the dispute as part of growing scrutiny of how Hollywood uses animals. PETA also launched a campaign about the mistreatment of ape actors and petitioned DiCaprio not to work with great apes.

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• 6. Records and Ratings

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  The Wolf of Wall Street uses the f-word 569 times, a total that earned it a Guinness World Record. Other coarse insults add a few more, bringing the film to an average of 2.81 profanities per minute. Goodfellas in 1990 had 300 uses of the word, and Scorsese's Casino in 1995 had 422. Menace II Society in 1993 had 305, Nil by Mouth in 1997 had 428, and Summer of Sam in 1999 had 435. Swearnet: The Movie has since passed them all with 935. The Wolf of Wall Street still holds the record for a major theatrical release.

  In the United Arab Emirates, the film's distributor cut 45 minutes of swearing, religious profanity, drug use, sex and nudity. It also muted dialogue containing expletives. The National reported that filmgoers there felt the film should not have been shown at all rather than edited so heavily.

  The Motion Picture Association of America first rated the film NC-17. Scorsese made slight changes and appealed, and the film received an R rating. The MPA's stated reasons were "sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence." In the United Kingdom, the British Board of Film Classification gave it an 18 certificate. Kenya, Malaysia, Nepal and Zimbabwe banned the film outright. Versions shown in India had additional cuts. Singapore trimmed a gay orgy scene and some religiously profane language before passing it R21.

  The film's original release date was the 15th of November 2013, but cuts to reduce the runtime pushed it back. On the 22nd of October it was reported that a Christmas release was planned. On the 29th of October, Paramount confirmed Christmas Day and a runtime of 165 minutes. On the 25th of November, the runtime was changed to 180 minutes.

  The premiere took place at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on the 17th of December 2013. The wide release followed on the 25th of December. Although the film was shot mostly on 35mm stock, it reached theaters in a different form. Paramount became the first major studio to distribute movies to theaters exclusively in digital format, ending 35mm prints entirely. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues was the last Paramount production to include a 35mm version for theaters.

  The film grossed $116.9 million in the United States and Canada and $289 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $406.9 million. That makes it Scorsese's highest-grossing film. It finished fifth in its opening weekend with $19.4 million from 3,387 theaters, and its five-day total was $34.2 million. The second weekend brought $13.2 million, a drop of 27.9%. The third brought $8.8 million, a drop of 33%. Both weekends placed fourth. In Australia, the film earned $12.96 million, the highest total for any R-rated film there.

  The DVD and Blu-ray arrived on the 25th of March 2014. On the 27th of January 2014, a four-hour director's cut had been announced for the home release. Paramount later said the release would carry only the original theatrical version. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray followed on the 14th of December 2021.

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• 7. Praise and Backlash

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  Peter Travers of Rolling Stone named The Wolf of Wall Street the third-best movie of 2013, behind 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "it is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year." Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the film "Olympian." He said that if it were Scorsese's last film it "would rank among the most harshly awe-inspiring farewells of the cinema." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it a B+ and called it "good, not great Scorsese."

  Dana Stevens of Slate was harder on it, calling it "epic in size, claustrophobically narrow in scope." Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post found the characters dull people made duller by the delusion that being high made them interesting. Some critics saw an irresponsible glorification of Belfort and his associates rather than a satirical takedown. DiCaprio defended the film, arguing that it does not glorify the excessive lifestyle it depicts.

  The film's reputation has held up over time. In 2016, it ranked No. 78 on the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century. In 2017, Brody named it the second-best film of the 21st century so far, behind Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love. In 2019, Brody named it the best film of the 2010s. Writers Guild of America members voted its screenplay 63rd on their list of the 101 greatest screenplays of the 21st century so far. In 2025, it ranked number 20 on The New York Times list of the 100 best movies of the 21st century. The American Film Institute chose it as one of the top ten films of 2013, and Metacritic found it was the ninth-most mentioned film on year-end rankings.

  The 86th Academy Awards nominated the film in five categories. They were Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Adapted Screenplay for Terence Winter, Best Actor for DiCaprio and Best Supporting Actor for Hill. It also received four BAFTA nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. At the 71st Golden Globe Awards, DiCaprio won Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.

  Audiences were less warm than critics. Those surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C," the lowest of any film opening that week. The Los Angeles Times suggested that the marketing may have drawn conservative viewers who expected a more moralistic tone. Steven Perlberg of Business Insider attended an advance screening near the Goldman Sachs building with an audience of finance workers. He reported cheers at what he considered all the wrong moments, such as when Belfort rips up a couch cushion to reach his hidden cocaine.

  Christina McDowell, whose father, Tom Prousalis, worked closely with Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter to Scorsese, DiCaprio and Belfort. She said the film insufficiently portrayed the victims, ignored the damage done to her family, and gave celebrity status to people who did not deserve it. She accused the filmmakers of "glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior." Variety's Whitney Friedlander called the film "three hours of cash, drugs, hookers, repeat." Nikole TenBrink of the Risk and Insurance Management Society took the opposite view. She called it a "cautionary tale of what can happen when fraud is left unchecked" and saw valuable lessons for risk professionals in Belfort's talent for selling and motivating people.

  Joel M. Cohen, the former Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted Belfort, criticized both the film and the book. He believed some of Belfort's claims were "invented," including how revered Belfort was at his firm. He faulted the film for leaving out the "thousands of victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars." He rejected the filmmakers' argument that showing them would have diverted attention from the wrongdoers. He called the ending, in which the real Belfort appears, "beyond an insult" to the victims.

  Belfort himself said the film captured the "overall feeling" of those years, adding, "the camaraderie, the insanity, that was accurate." He said his real drug use was "much worse," claiming he was "on 22 different drugs at the end." He disliked the way the film simplified his crimes, because "it made me look like I was just trying to rip people off." He still acknowledged that the simplification was "a very easy way in three hours" to "move the audience emotionally."

  On the 28th of September 2022, Nadine Macaluso, the ex-wife on whom the character Naomi was based, said the film's depiction of Belfort and their relationship was accurate. She said she hopes to educate people about the signs of domestic abuse and toxic relationships.

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• 8. The Money Trail

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  In 2015, Red Granite Pictures and the film's financing became implicated in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, a major corruption case that began in Malaysia. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission alleged that the film was paid for with money producer Riza Aziz had stolen from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund. Aziz is the stepson of Najib Razak, who was then Malaysia's prime minister. Aziz was arrested and pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges in July 2019.

  Court filings said a company owned by the fugitive businessman Jho Low gave the film's producers a $9 million advance. Low received a "special thanks" in the film's credits.

  In 2016, the United States Department of Justice named the film in a series of civil complaints. The complaints said Red Granite provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the 1MDB fund were illicitly siphoned. To settle the civil lawsuit, Red Granite agreed to pay the U.S. government $60 million, with no admission of wrongdoing or liability. The settlement was part of a wider American effort to seize approximately $1.7 billion in assets allegedly bought with embezzled 1MDB funds. In May 2020, Aziz was discharged on bail of 1,000,000 Malaysian ringgit, about US$240,000.

  In January 2020, Belfort himself sued Red Granite for $300 million and asked to void his rights deal. He said he would never have sold the rights to Red Granite if he had known how the film was being financed. The man whose crimes inspired a film about fraud was now suing over the fraud behind that film.

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