Was there a real life inspiration behind the Duke brothers in Trading Places?
The Duke brothers in Trading Places remind me of the Koch brothers, and based on a quick google search I'm definitely not alone. Is there any evidence that the characters in the film were at least inspired by real people?
Best Answer
The orange juice trading scheme was likely based on an attempt to corner the silver market by the Hunt Brothers....
The story about the Dukes' cornering of the orange juice market was probably inspired by the "Silver Thursday" market crash of March 27, 1980, when the Hunt brothers of Texas tried to corner the silver market and subsequently failed to meet a one hundred million dollar margin call.
The characters themselves were supposedly inspired by two brothers who were doctors.
The idea for the film was inspired by a tennis game. "There were these two brothers who were both doctors who I would play tennis with on a fairly regular basis, and they were incredibly irritating to play with because they had a major sibling rivalry going, all the time about everything," Screenwriter Timothy Harris explained. He presented the idea of brothers arguing the "nature versus nurture" debate to his writing partner, Herschel Weingrod, and the two went to work.
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Is Trading Places based on a true story?
The writers were inspired by a real-life pair of wealthy and competitive brothers. Although Trading Places is largely based around the three central roles of Louis, Billy Ray and Ophelia, these were not the characters the story was initially built around.How much money did the Dukes lose in Trading Places?
So half the Duke's margin call is $197,000,000, that means they had a long position of 101,025 OJ Contracts ($394m/2/$1,950). Each OJ contract amount to 15,000 pounds of OJ, so that's 1.5 million pounds of orange juice solids to be delivered to warehouses in Florida, New Jersey, or Delaware.How much money did Winthorpe and Valentine make in Trading Places?
Profits: (122 cents/pound - 38 cents/pound) * 15000 pounds/contract * 20000 contracts = $252,000,000.00.Who were Randolph and Mortimer?
Randolph and Mortimer Duke are the main antagonists of the 1983 film Trading Places, and make a cameo appearance in the 1988 film Coming to America. They are the greedy, heartless owners of "Duke & Duke", a successful commodities brokerage in Philadelphia.Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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