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What Is Netflix's The Laundromat Movie About?

Meryl Streep Rings the Alarm on Money Swindlers in Netflix's The Laundromat Trailer

The world is full of scammers trying to take your money, and in Netflix's The Laundromat, Meryl Streep is determined to make them pay — literally. Based on "some real sh*t," the dark comedy chronicles the group of journalists behind the 2016 Panama Papers incident, who uncovered the illicit money networks at the heart of some seriously shady financial activities worldwide. The Panama Papers were the documents that exposed the companies setting up offshore shell companies that allowed them to avoid paying billions of taxes and screw over all the people not making millions of dollars in income.

The Laundromat tackles the story through the perspective of Streep's Ellen Martin, a middle-class woman who is investigating an insurance fraud case after the death of her husband. When she starts asking questions, she discovers that it's all much bigger than she thought possible. Directed by Ocean's Eleven's Steven Soderbergh and with a script by Scott Z. Burns (The Informant), the film has a star-studded cast including Antonio Banderas, Gary Oldman, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, and Matthias Schoenaerts.

Check out the trailer above and take your time trying to figure out exactly what accent Oldman is putting on — The Laundromat will premiere at the Venice Film Festival before receiving a theatrical and streaming release on Netflix this Fall.

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