X

Netflix is already making a WallStreetBets and GameStop movie

Of course it is.

Jennifer Bisset Former Senior Editor / Culture
Jennifer Bisset was a senior editor for CNET. She covered film and TV news and reviews. The movie that inspired her to want a career in film is Lost in Translation. She won Best New Journalist in 2019 at the Australian IT Journalism Awards.
Expertise Film and TV Credentials
  • Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards
Jennifer Bisset
2 min read
gettyimages-1230440907

Reddit users are betting they can take GameStop shares "to the moon."

Getty Images

One of the biggest stories of the year is barely a week old, but Hollywood is already calling. Two movies , including one from Netflix , are reportedly in the works to cover the story of the anti-establishment Redditors who trolled Wall Street.

Netflix has Zero Dark Thirty writer Mark Boal in its sights to pen a script, with Noah Centineo, star of the To All the Boys I've Loved Before Netflix movies, already attached to play one of the main roles.

Earlier, Deadline reported that MGM had snapped up the rights to a proposal for a book written by Ben Mezrich -- the same author who wrote the book The Social Network was adapted from. Michael DeLuca was a producer on the David Fincher film and, according to Deadline, this new project will pair him with Mezrich once more.

Here's a little background on what's been going down.

For years, Wall Street investors have been betting that video game retailer GameStop would fail. They said the move toward online game buying would eventually spell doom. The pandemic appeared to speed up those changes, too. Wall Street was so sure GameStop would fail that they made it one of the most heavily bet-against stocks on the market.

Over the past few months though, a group of Reddit users have been buying up shares, pushing up 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 the Wall Street doubters thought. Then, as GameStop value soared, Wall Street's bad bets started to cost investors billions of dollars.

It hasn't stopped 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 from the forum r/WallStreetBets sent the stock up more than 14,300%, though it's gone through wild fluctuations. They've spread their strategy to struggling movie chain AMC and tech company BlackBerry , too.

You can see this has potential for a compelling movie.

Mezrich's book, which still doesn't have a publisher, is expected to go to out to publishers for auction in February.

CNET's Ian Sherr contributed to this story.