See Sarah Snook Confront Zach Galifianakis in a Clip from ‘The Beanie Bubble’: Exclusive Video

They were cute, cuddly, and for a time, coveted by countless Americans.

In the 1990s, Beanie Babies, small stuffed animals with whimsical names like Legs the Frog and Splash the Whale, became a sensation across the country, aided by the rise of the Internet and auction sites like eBay.

Co-directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash Jr., dramatize the fascinating saga in their new movie The Beanie Bubble, based on the 2015 book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette. (Gore also wrote the screenplay.)

“To peel back the crazy on the surface and see the crazy underneath is actually the same crazy that runs through everything else in America,” Kulash tells PEOPLE.

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He and Gore were both particularly interested in “the female relationship to the American dream” and the three women who often went uncredited with helping toy executive Ty Warner create one of the biggest sensations of the 20th century.

The film is told from their perspectives (though their names have been changed): Robbie Jones (Elizabeth Banks), who lived in the same Chicago apartment building as Warner (Zach Galifianakis) in the early 1980s; Sheila Harper (Sarah Snook), a lighting designer who met Warner in the 1990s; and college student Maya Kumar (Geraldine Viswanathan), an employee at Warner’s company.

“When they step into his world, they find this massive incredible opportunity awaits them. And as they buy into it more and more, it gets more and more exciting, but also turns on them and eventually they realize exactly how poorly it's treating them and they have to get out,” teases Kulash.

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As dramatic as that sounds, the movie is also fun—and funny. “It was really important to us to get through a sense of joy,” adds Gore. “And so the colorful backdrop of these stuffed animals that were an insane craze for three years and treated like gold was the perfect sandbox for us.”

The humor comes through in this clip from the movie, featuring Harper meeting Warner for the first time. He shows up late for a meeting and blocks her car with his, angering the working mother.

“Do you often keep people waiting three hours?” she asks him. “Cause I told my sick daughters I’d be back as quick as I could, and then I waited here for longer than a human should.”

The scene is one of many in which Snook shows off her considerable talents. “We didn't fully understand just how off-the-charts phenomenal she is until we worked with her. And she never did a bad take,” Gore says of Snook. “She has that strength that we have seen in Shiv [on HBO’s Succession] so beautifully. But she also has so much tenderness and vulnerability and warmth.”

Galifianakis, for his part, “can do terrible things and you always love him,” she continues. “And that was really important to the character of Ty because our character is a very charismatic person who is also capable of cruelty and betrayal, and you have to be along that ride with him with the women.”

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For the record, neither Gore nor Kulash, who are married, were ever involved in the Beanie Baby craze themselves. “We weren’t collecting them,” says Kulash, “which gave us a nice distance from [the material].”

Gore, whose father, former Vice President Al Gore is also an Academy Award-winning documentarian, has given his seal of approval on the finished movie, says the director: “He's seen it. He loves it. Both parents on both sides are incredibly excited about it.”

The Beanie Bubble premieres in select theaters July 21 and streams on Apple TV+ July 28.

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