10 Films That Creepily Predicted 2016’s Biggest Moments

Way before Tom Cruise was a known advocate of celebrity cult Scientology he was starring in movies like The Firm, a Sydney Pollack film adapted from a John Grisham novel of the same name about a young Harvard law graduate, Mitch McDeere, who lands himself a job with a prestigious tax law firm.

Initially blinded by the perks of the job, he soon finds himself embroiled in the shadier side of tax law which apparently is nothing more than a way for wealthy clients to dodge taxes by hiding their money in offshore tax havens. Increasingly morally torn but trapped by his own involvement in the firm’s dodgy dealings, McDeere colludes with the FBI to concoct an elaborate plan that will bring down the shady law firm.

Earlier this year news of the Panama Papers scandal broke that echoed the goings-on that occurred over 20 years previously in The Firm. Thanks to the efforts of an anonymous whistle-blower, currently known only as ‘John Doe’, and an international team of journalists information was leaked that implicated many wealthy individuals – everyone from high-level government officials like Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull to Harry Potter star Emma Watson – in the dodgy dealings of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

What’s so wrong with that, I hear you cry? Well, Mossack Fonseca is known for setting up shell companies in tax havens which allow clients to hide billions of dollars while avoiding having to pay pesky tax bills. It’s all apparently legal, but entirely morally cloudy too.

Tax havens, tax avoidance and other such schemes designed to help the rich get richer are nothing new of course, but the Panama Papers leak is the biggest scandal of its kind to date and one that Grisham and Pollack prophetically predicted way before news of it broke.