Elizabeth Banks won't let the toy industry break her soul in The Beanie Bubble

After successfully going toe-to-toe with Cocaine Bear, Elizabeth Banks is ready to befriend some new furry friends — spotted dogs, rainbow teddy bears, and calico kittens, oh my! — in the upcoming comedy The Beanie Bubble.

EW has a first look at the movie, which is inspired by real events, and based on Zac Bissonnette's 2015 book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash direct the film, which chronicles the unbelievable story of how billionaire Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis) founded the now-iconic heart-tagged toy company and the three women who helped him cultivate the Beanie Baby phenomenon that captivated the entire U.S. throughout the '90s.

"It's kind of about how the systems are rigged and that these women each had to figure that out for themselves and then try to extract themselves from the system before it literally broke them," Banks — who plays Ty's business partner, Robbie — explains to EW. "And I don't mean, like, made them broke. I mean broke their soul."

The film travels in time between the '80s and '90s and is told from three different female perspectives: In addition to Bank's Robbie, there's Ty's love interest and mother of two, Sheila (Sarah Snook), and Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan), a tech genius at the forefront of the '90s internet boom. While all initially charmed by Ty's vision and charisma, the trio soon discover that the brilliant inventor — and the reality of the so-called American dream — isn't nearly as warm or fuzzy as the adorable plushies they're peddling.

"We really love character-driven stories that bring a lot of joy while hopefully getting at more meaningful things in a fun way," Gore, who also penned the film's screenplay, tells EW. "For us, The Beanie Bubble was a chance to tell a really fascinating story about what America values — who and what we value and why — with this incredibly fun backdrop of stuffed animals and this insane craze where, for three years, people treated little $5 bean bag animals like gold. The absurdity of that story was really appealing to us, but we were most drawn to these women's stories behind the phenomenon."

Gore notes that it was important to her and Kulash — OK Go's lead singer, who also co-composed the score with Nathan Barr — that the colorful comedy was not only filled with laughs but also focused on "the female relationship to the American dream," which she describes as both "unique and tortured."

"It's an interesting thing that we see over and over again, that Damian and I have talked a lot about, about the myth of the lone male genius," Gore says. "And then really looking at how there are elements of truth to that in these personalities that do groundbreaking work, but there's always so much more to the story. And, for us, what is so fascinating is the people that throw themselves into those causes and missions and ideas and don't necessarily get the credit or their names on the tag or anything, but were just as instrumental in bringing about these phenomena."

When it came time for the husband and wife directing duo to find their eccentric — and notoriously private — big screen billionaire, Gore and Kulash "never considered anyone" but Galifianakis for the role. (He also serves as an executive producer on the film.)

"For Ty, we really need to understand that [he's] a broken person, who is also brilliant and also convincing," Gore explains. "He was also going to do horrible things and is going to lure people in who have a caretaking instinct and also see him as a ticket to something better in their journey that they can latch onto. And then the women's journey is really about realizing they never needed him to begin with: The answer was themselves all along, but they come to that different ways."

That doesn't mean, however, that the pair want viewers to simply see Ty as the bad guy.

"Everybody in the story is doing what they think they should do next, and you can't blame the guy who comes up with these stuffed animals for just chasing them like we all do," Kulash says. "And, hopefully, that gets at a more nuanced picture of what the problem is: It's not one bad person making evil choices, it's that a set of poor choices is made very easy and very attractive to him too. Everybody kind of buys into what seems like best for them and it winds up in the same place it always does."

In Robbie's case, Banks notes that part of breaking that cycle means separating herself from her "fiery relationship" with Ty and letting go of her "regret" and the "chip on her shoulder."

"She would've been a child of the '60s, early '70s," Banks says. "She has that realization throughout the course of the movie that she thought she was being taken care of but, in fact, she was always the caretaker. It really broke my heart reading that for her, and I think there are so many women of that generation who had to figure that out — there's women right now [still figuring that out]."

While their characters vacillate between best buds and bitter rivals, Banks adds that she and Galifianakis "brought out the best in each other" on screen and still frequently text one another. "We have a very funny text chain about who is better or worse in this movie," she jokes. "We had the best time. It's a lot of backhanded compliments on the text chain."

In addition to its complex relationships, the film also traces the fever pitch surrounding Beanie Babies: how they came to be, how the internet further fueled the craze, and how the little critters eventually fell out of favor.

"It was such a weird revelation to read the book and see how crucial eBay was to this," Kulash says. "This is going to happen to something. There's gonna be some small $5 thing that people are going to overvalue and it's gonna be a runaway train that has this insane thing happen. And the fact that it happened in such a hilariously, beautifully, gloriously playful way with stuffed animals of all things is kinda wonderful."

"We talk about [The Beanie Bubble] sometimes as a funeral for the American dream, but a New Orleans-style parade through the French Quarter type of funeral," Gore jokes. "We're getting at some darkness and dysfunction, but it's gonna be a party too, and so we'd like it to have that feeling. And then the cast, which is so incredible, was able to deliver that."

Kulash says he and Gore hope viewers leave The Beanie Bubble "thinking about and questioning the way America works." He adds, "We also want people to leave it in a good mood and a little bit fist-pumping and it's a tough balance. It's easy to be mad at the system in a way that's not super productive…. It's also easy to be just happy for a single character. But what we wanted was to have you feel the victory of these women beating a rigged game with enough of a bittersweet annoyance that the game is rigged in the first place."

The Beanie Bubble will premiere in select theaters on July 21 and globally on Apple TV+ on July 28.

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