Less than a week after a group of Redditors joined forces to upset the stock market and buy up GameStop shares, two separate movies about the incident are in the works.
Deadline is reporting that two different movie projects are in the works that will focus on the r/WallStreetBets board and the disruption it caused to the stock market last week, an event that is still ongoing as shares of GameStop, AMC and more continue to fluctuate. The drama spread from social media to the real world as numerous stock apps blocked the buying of GameStop and others, prompting the federal government to begin investigating the system hedge funds and Wall Street traders regularly manipulate that retail traders like the Redditors were taking advantage of.
The first film announced is based on the mere idea of a book, with MGM buying the rights to Ben Mezrich's proposal for The Antisocial Network. The book will cover the story, while the film will translate it to the big screen, all before pen has even been set to paper. Mezrich is the author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, a Tale Of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal which was adapted into the film The Social Network by David Fincher and producer Michael DeLuca, the latter of whom is attached to the new film. In another tie to the previous property, the real-life Winklevoss twins will also produce.
The second film comes from Netflix and already has a writer and star attached. Mark Boal, the writer of Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, will tackle the script for the project. Noah Centineo, one of the stars of Netflix's To All the Boys I've Loved Before, will lead the project. Centineo will also lead Netflix's He-Man movie and appear as Atom Smashed in the upcoming Black Adam film.
For those not clear on what exactly unfolded last week, the r/Wallstreetbets subreddit came together to inflate the shares for GameStop, AMC Theatres, Nokia and other companies on the brink of bankruptcy. This has led many in the business to take up short-selling trading strategies against the two, which means speculating on the continued decline of the companies' stock. But since Redditors have inflated the price of GameStop and AMC stocks, the short-sellers are losing money, which has angered the hedge funds losing money but cast the Redditors as heroes to many given they are using the tactics of the wealthy to disrupt their flow of income. Regardless of where you fall, it's not hard to see why many are eager to see the drama adapted to the screen.