Movies

'The Antisocial Network': Hollywood Is Already Making A Movie About The Ongoing GameStop Chaos

the antisocial network
By Hoai-Tran Bui

Only Hollywood could match Wall Street for making billion-dollar projects out of hypotheticals. And the two of them collide in The Antisocial Network, a book proposal about the ongoing GameStop-Wall Street chaos that MGM has landed the rights to following a heated bidding war.

Deadline reports that MGM was able to acquire the rights to the book proposal The Antisocial Network from bestselling author Ben Mezrich, who has an impressive resume of nonfiction books adapted to the screen, including 21 and The Social Network. So it's no surprise that Mezrich jumped at the chance to pen a book about the ongoing GameStop pandemonium at Wall Street, even if it's still happening.

The book proposal will supposedly center on the group of "a ragtag group of amateur investors, gamers, and internet trolls who brought Wall Street to its knees," per Deadline, which Mezrich and his reps brought to market barely a week after the GameStop frenzy started. From there, Hollywood studios were quick to try to snap up the story, with MGM acquiring the rights by Friday night.

The dirty details of the GameStop chaos are a little hard to explain by someone who doesn't know the ins and outs of Wall Street, but the broad strokes — of a group of amateur investors from the Reddit page r/WallStreetBets who banded together to put the squeeze on at least two hedge funds that had bet that GameStop shares would fall, essentially disrupting the entire market — is the kind of David vs. Goliath story that Hollywood loves. The saga actually began in September, after investor Ryan Cohen took a 13% position in GameStop, and began lobbying for it to move its sales online, in a bid to rival Amazon. Taking Cohen's lead, groups of investors on Reddit began to invest in shares in GameStop, causing the video game retailer's market value to increase over 1,700% since December. But the market disruption has put these amateur investors in the crosshairs of Wall Street, which has been reportedly sabotaging any more attempts to raise GameStop's market value.

It's an ongoing saga, and it's unclear when Mezrich's story will actually stop. But, the story has caught the public's attention, with many already making comparisons to Adam McKay's 2015 biographical comedy-drama The Big Short, including The Daily Show host Trevor Noah, who does a better job explaining all of this than I do.

It's easy to imagine McKay being first in line to direct MGM's adaptation of The Antisocial Network, which will reunite the studio's Michael DeLuca with Mezrich following the Oscar-winning The Social Network, an adaptation of Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, a Tale Of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal which DeLuca produced.

Aaron Ryder of Ryder Picture Company will produce The Antisocial Network. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss will executive produce via their Winklevoss Pictures production banner. The book is expected to go to out to publishers for auction in February.

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