Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman's years-long crusade against Herbalife is heading to the silver screen in April.
At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, Ackman and his big short bet will be featured in a documentary film called "Betting on Zero," directed and written by Ted Braun.
Braun followed Ackman to some Herbalife-related meetings and events. He was also interviewed for the documentary.
Ackman's taken some extraordinary steps in his (so far unsuccessful) attempt to expose the company as a "fraud."
In 2014, for example, he booked out a conference center in New York's Times Square and gave what he called "the most important presentation" of his career. The stock rose as a he spoke. And he just released a 13 minute film that includes interviews with alleged victims of Herbalife's practices.
Ackman did not finance "Betting On Zero" or conceive of it.
Here's a description of the film:
Allegations of corporate criminality and high-stakes Wall Street vendettas swirl throughout this riveting financial docu-thriller. Controversial hedge fund titan Bill Ackman is on a crusade to expose global nutritional giant Herbalife as the largest pyramid scheme in history while Herbalife execs claim Ackman is a market manipulator out to bankrupt them and make a killing off his billion dollar short.
For more than three years, Ackman, the founder of $12 billion Pershing Square Capital, has been waging war against Herbalife, a multilevel marketer that sells nutritional shakes and weight-loss products. In late December 2012, Ackman publicly declared that he was short $1 billion worth of Herbalife.
He believes that the company is operating as a "pyramid scheme" that targets poor people, particularly from minority populations. It's his contention that regulators, specifically the Federal Trade Commission, will shut the company down.
Herbalife has always denied Ackman's allegations.
In March 2014, the FTC opened an investigation into the company. Last month, the company said in a filing that it's in talks with the FTC.
Ackman has said multiple times that he would take this short "to the end of the earth."
The Tribeca Film Festival takes place in New York from April 13-21.
