GameStop/Reddit saga is getting the feature film treatment

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Well, that didn't take long. Hollywood is usually pretty quick to jump on a sensational story so it should come as no surprise that the recent GameStop/Reddit stock saga, which already has been playing like a movie itself, is getting the feature film treatment. MGM has landed the rights to Ben Mezrich's book proposal "The Antisocial Network" which will focus on the recent Wall Street-GameStop craziness. 

"The Antisocial Network" book proposal focuses on a ragtag group of amateur investors, gamers, and internet trolls who brought Wall Street to its knees during a particularly crazy week for the stock market. The story only gets more Hollywood because this event is barely a week old but Mezrich and his reps were able to take the book proposal on the market at the end of the week and by Friday MGM rushed in to acquire the rights. 

I had to really focus on what exactly went on with this story for it to take off but once you have all the moving pieces in place, it's pretty fascinating to dive into. A group of amateur investors from the Reddit page called "Wall Street Bets" banded together to put the squeeze on at least two hedge funds that bet that the shares for GameStop would fall. The hedge funds were shorting GameStop's shares thinking that its stock would see a further decline. In order to stick it to the man, the amateur investors began pushing GameStop in the opposite direction by buying shares and stock options which caused GameStop's market value to increase over 1,700% since December. When it was all said and done, the market value for GameStop rose over $10 billion between Tuesday and Wednesday last week.

Noticing what their amateur investing was doing for the struggling GameStop brand, more newcomers to the stock game began looking at stocks that seemed doomed to take a fall like Nokia and AMC. The strategy began to pay off with those companies as well which caused a major controversy when the trading app RobinHood began putting restrictions on certain stocks. Apparently only the rich are allowed to get richer.

It's unknown where Mezrich's story will end since this is still an ongoing turn of events but it should make for a pretty interesting motion picture. The project brings MGM's Michael DeLuca back together with Mezrich as they adapted his book "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal", into the Academy Award-winning The Social Network. If they can make the creation of Facebook into a compelling story, I'm dying to see what they do with this.

Are YOU interested in seeing a film based on the GameStop/Reddit chaos?