Is the movie Gold (2016) based on a true story?

Yes, the movie Gold (2016) is based on a true story. It is loosely based on the Bre-X mining scandal, which occurred in the 1990s. However, the movie takes significant creative liberties and fictionalizes many elements of the story.

What is the true story behind the movie Gold (2016)?

The movie Gold (2016) is inspired by the true story of the Bre-X Minerals scandal, which took place in the 1990s. The film follows a fictional character named Kenny Wells, loosely based on Bre-X founder David Walsh, as he teams up with a geologist named Michael Acosta to search for gold in Indonesia.

In reality, Walsh was a Canadian businessman who founded a mining company called Bre-X Minerals in the 1980s. In 1993, the company announced that it had discovered a massive gold deposit in Busang, Indonesia. The news caused the stock price of Bre-X to skyrocket, making Walsh and his investors incredibly wealthy on paper.

However, as it turned out, the gold deposit never actually existed. Walsh and his team had falsified the results of their exploratory drilling, leading investors to believe that they had struck gold. When the truth came out, the stock price of Bre-X plummeted, and Walsh faced a number of lawsuits and legal troubles. He died in 1998 at the age of 52.

The movie Gold takes some liberties with the true story, portraying Walsh as a more sympathetic character and changing the location of the gold deposit from Busang to a fictional site in the Indonesian jungle. However, the film still captures the greed, deception, and fraud that were central to the Bre-X scandal.