Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulator in charge of the futures markets, approved the applications of the Cantor Futures Exchange and Media Derivatives (MDEX), to serve as contract markets to trade futures in the media market.

Now the CFTC is holding hearings to discuss whether the commission should approve Cantor’s and MDEX’s first contracts involving futures and options based on the opening weekend revenues for the film “Takers,” a movie about bank robbers starring the hip-hop music star Tip Harris (T.I.), and Hayden Christensen (whiny Darth Vader).

These “synthetic contracts” allow traders to bet on the amount of money the movie would make. If the movie makes more or less money than the initial revenue level set by the contract, one side would collect money and the other would lose money. These would be so-called synthetic contracts, meaning that the traders would not own the revenues they were betting on, so they would be purely speculative.

This is all I have to say about this whole idea:

Movie Time at the C.F.T.C. Draws Heated Debate – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.