Reddit users bet they can take GameStop shares “to the moon”.
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One of the biggest stories of the year is barely a week old, but Hollywood is already calling. Two films, including one from Netflix, are reportedly covering the story of the film anti-establishment Redditors rolling Wall Street.
Netflix has Zero Dark Thirty writer Mark Boal set to write a screenplay, starring Noah Centineo, the star of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before Netflix movies.
Earlier, Deadline reported that MGM had sharpened the rights to a proposal for a book written by Ben Mezrich – the same author who wrote the book The Social Network has been adapted. Michael DeLuca was a producer of the David Fincher film and according to Deadline, this new project will reconnect with Mezrich.
Here’s a little background on what’s going on.
Wall Street investors have been betting for years that video game retailer GameStop would fail. They said the move to buying online games would eventually cause doom. The pandemic has occurred speed up those changes, too. Wall Street was so sure GameStop would fail that they made it one of the the strongest bet against stocks on the market.
Over the past few months, however, a group of Reddit users have been buying shares, increasing the value of GameStop and undermining Wall Street’s big bets. Initially, these forum traders bought because they believe the company is better off than the Wall Street skeptics thought. When the value of GameStop skyrocketed, Wall Street’s bad bets cost investors billions of dollars.
It did not stop there. The Reddit users want the price to rise even more as they wage an epic battle against Wall Street. At one point, the Reddit users of the forum r / WallStreetBets sent the stock up more than 14,300%, although it went through wild fluctuations. They spread their strategy to the struggling film chain AMC and the technology company BlackBerry, too.
You can see that it has potential for a captivating film.
Mezrich’s book, which still does not have a publisher, is expected to go to the publishing auction in February.
CNET’s Ian Sherr contributed to this story.