GameStop Saga to Be Made into a Movie

Hollywood Film Distributor Acquires Film Adaptation Rights

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] The GameStop stock surge incident that shook Wall Street due to the rebellion of retail investors will be made into a movie.

On the 1st (local time), according to Deadline and MarketWatch, American film distributor MGM has acquired the film rights to a new book from bestselling author Ben Mezrich, who is planning a new book related to the GameStop stock surge incident.

Mezrich, who has written over 20 books and sold more than 6 million copies, is a popular author whose book "Bringing Down the House" was a New York Times bestseller for 63 consecutive weeks.

The book, tentatively titled "Antisocial Network," is said to tell the story of individual investors who united in the online community stock chat room "WallStreetBets" to fight against short-selling hedge funds.

Mezrich proposed the film adaptation of his new book, and MGM quickly secured the film rights. The movie will be produced by Aaron Ryder of Ryder Pictures Company, who recently signed his first film contract with MGM.

Meanwhile, streaming company Netflix has also begun working on a screenplay to make a movie about the GameStop incident. Netflix is negotiating a screenplay writing contract with Mark Boal, who wrote the screenplays for the films "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty."

Deadline also reported that Netflix is considering casting Noah Centineo, who played the male lead in the film "To All the Boys I've Loved Before."

The GameStop stock surge incident involved retail investors centered on the US online community site Reddit who bought large amounts of GameStop stock to counter the short-selling by large hedge funds, causing the stock price to skyrocket. As a result, GameStop's value surged more than 1700% since December, and the US MTS Robinhood sparked controversy by blocking individuals from buying GameStop shares.

Hollywood has previously produced films about the worst financial incidents that shook the global financial markets. The 2015 film "The Big Short," based on the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, was modeled on real-life figures such as hedge fund managers Michael Burry and Steve Eisman, who predicted the housing market collapse and amassed huge wealth. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards in 2016 and won for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Additionally, the film "Margin Call: 24 Hours, Manipulated Truth" (2011) was made about the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, and the documentary film "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (2005) documented the Enron scandal, the largest accounting fraud in US history, drawing significant attention.