For the uninitiated Atlas Shrugged, the movie is the adaptation of Ayn Rand’s 1957 classic novel. The novel, which centers around railroad executive Dagny Taggart as she fights to keep her business a float as American society crumbles around her, and descends into deeper and deeper recession .
In the novel Rand dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. She considered herself primarily a fiction writer, but realized that in order to create heroic fictional characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles which make such individuals possible.
http://www.manhattanstyle.com/arts-entertainment/movies/who-is-john-gault/