Netflix Is Making a Movie About the GameStop Short Squeeze
For weeks, the business world has been focused on one place: A down-on-its-luck video game retailer whose stock had suddenly become the most-traded on Wall Street. After hedge funds and professional brokers sold GameStop stocks short (basically betting that the stock would continue to fall amidst the difficulties in the retail industry during the coronavirus pandemic), smaller online traders sent the company’s stock skyrocketing by buying up shares and options. Earlier this year, GameStop’s stock hit a low of $2.57. During this so-called “short squeeze” — where those who’ve shorted a stock need to buy up shares at a high price to cover their losses, which then pushes prices even higher — GameStop’s stock was at one point trading as high as $483 a share.
Even though its price has fallen significantly from that high — it’s currently down almost $100 from its previous closing price — this is still the business story of the young year. The idea of underdog internet traders beating billionaires at their own game sounds like a movie — so why not make one about it? It looks like Netflix is going to try, with Deadline reporting that the company is lining up a creative team to adapt the GameStop stock fiasco into an original film, written by The Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal:
Noah Centineo will be attached to play a major role — Centineo starred in the Netflix film To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, completed the Jackie Chan-directed The Diary and will play Atom Smasher opposite Dwayne Johnson in the Jaume Collet-Serra-directed Black Adam. Scott Galloway, the activist/journalist and NYU prof and an expert on tech issues who teams on the the popular Pivot podcast, is in talks to consult on the script.
Dude, Law & Order is going to be so mad when they found out someone ripped this one the headlines before they could.
The stock market can be tough to follow for the uninitiated — how many times have you googled “short squeeze” this week? — but it also has produced a surprising number of entertaining movies, from Trading Places to Wall Street to The Big Short to Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. We definitely would not sell the idea of a Marl Boal GameStop movie short.
Gallery — The Worst Netflix Movies of the Year: