The website also noted that the producer of “Betting on Zero” and Bill Ackman were on the same crew team in college. According to Mr. Braun, one of the producers, Devin Adair, “overlapped” with Mr. Ackman at Harvard, but said that they were not friends and hadn’t talked in decades. Ms. Adair was the coxswain for one of the crew boats; Mr. Ackman rowed on a different boat.

Mr. Braun — who previously made “Darfur Now,” a documentary about genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan that was produced by the actor Don Cheadle, among others — said that when he first began researching the battle between Mr. Ackman and Herbalife, he wasn’t sure who was on the right side. He said he wanted to produce a film that explored “the place of money in America.”

The battle has been portrayed as either a pitched fight between a narcissistic, know-it-all investor seeking to bankrupt a company for profit (that’s Herbalife’s view) or as a crusading moralist trying to right a wrong. It may be a combination of both.

“This is an ‘Emperor Wears No Clothes’ story,” Mr. Braun said, explaining that the charm of that fairy tale “is it’s told by the sweet little boy.” The message, he noted, is harder to accept when “the messenger is a tough hedge fund manager.”

And while there have long been moral questions about the very concept of “shorting” — betting against a company’s stock — it is hard not to look at this particular situation as an example of an investor acting as a check on the market.

Admittedly, there were questions about Mr. Ackman’s tactics. He spent more than $50 million on his campaign, lobbying regulators and members of Congress to look into Herbalife’s practices. But if Mr. Ackman didn’t do it, who would? Complaints about Herbalife have been made for years, but it wasn’t until Mr. Ackman very loudly got involved that the government stepped in.

There are those who worry that Mr. Ackman’s involvement in Herbalife means the oligarchs have taken over — that billionaires have become de facto regulators. It is a valid concern. And the billionaires may not always be on the right side. (Mr. Ackman has been involved in some investments, like Valeant Pharmaceuticals and J. C. Penney, that didn’t go his way.)