Rights to a WallStreetBets/GameStop movie have already been sold – CNET [CNET]

One of the biggest stories of the year is barely a week old, but Hollywood is already calling. Deadline reports that MGM has snapped up the rights to a proposal for a book covering the story of the anti-establishment Redditors who trolled Wall Street. With some of the same people behind The Social Network involved, this sounds promising.

The book, titled The Antisocial Network, comes from 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.

For years, Wall Street investors bet 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.

Ian Sherr contributed to this story.