Reddit users are betting that they can take GameStop shares “to the moon”.
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One of the biggest stories of the year is only a week old, but Hollywood is already calling. Two films, including one from Netflix, are reportedly in the works to cover the story of Anti-establishment redditors who chased Wall Street.
Netflix has Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal to write a screenplay, with Noah Centineo, star of the films For all the boys I loved before Netflix, already hired to play one of the main roles.
Deadline previously reported that MGM seized the rights to a proposed book written by Ben Mezrich – the same author who wrote the book The Social Network was adapted. Michael DeLuca was the producer of David Fincher’s film and, according to Deadline, this new project will put him on par with Mezrich once again.
Here’s a little background on what’s going on.
For years, Wall Street investors have bet that video game retailer GameStop would go bankrupt. They said that the move to buying games online would eventually spell doom. The pandemic seemed accelerate these changes, also. Wall Street was so sure GameStop would fail that they made it one of the more strongly bet against stocks in the market.
In the past few months, however, a group of Reddit users have been buying stocks, increasing GameStop’s value and undermining Wall Street’s big bets. At first, these forum traders bought because they believed the company was better off than those who doubted Wall Street thought. Then, as GameStop’s value soared, Wall Street’s bad bets started costing investors billions of dollars.
It didn’t stop there. Reddit users want the price to rise further, as they fight an epic battle against Wall Street. At some point, Reddit users of the r / WallStreetBets forum sent the stock to over 14,300%, although it has experienced great fluctuations. They spread their strategy to the AMC film network and technology company Blackberry, also.
You can see that this has the potential for an attractive film.
Mezrich’s book, which does not yet have a publisher, is due to be auctioned by publishers in February.
Ian Sherr of CNET contributed to this story.