Netflix, MGM to make films about GameStop short squeeze

The GameStop short squeeze will turn into movies. They are expected to describe the power of individual investors who resist the greed of the Wall Street. Although the event progresses even now, Hollywood producers have nimbly initiated their moves to make movies out of the situation, implying a high level of public attention and interest.

Global video streaming service provider Netflix and film producing firm MGM each started working on the dramatization of the ongoing event, according to entertainment news media Deadline.com on Monday (local time). The short squeeze of GameStop is a happening where a short squeeze was triggered by the users of online website Reddit and a larger group of U.S. individual investors joined forces to raise the stock price of video gaming retailer GameStop against the short sellers of Wall Street hedge funds. The result was a loss of more than 10 trillion won to hedge-fund investors who jumped to use a short squeeze.

Netflix opened up negotiations with Mark Boal, one of the biggest contributors to the winning by “The Hurt Locker” of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. Boal is a famous screenwriter and film producer in Hollywood who wrote “Zero Dark Thirty” in 2012 describing the assassination mission on Osama Bin Laden. Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, is said to give advice to the movie’s script. He has criticized tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon for monopolizing markets.

The Netflix-version movie on GameStop will star Noah Centineo, who has achieved movie stardom by playing Peter in “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before,” a Netflix movie based on the novel of the same name written by Korean-American author Jenny Han. “The GameStop saga could also appeal to younger audiences who have grown even more difficult to capture, because they don’t go to the movies as frequently as previous generations and find entertainment through videogames or apps such as TikTok,” The Wall Street Journal wrote. “Mr. Centineo, in particular, would bring with him a large following of young fans who know him as the love interest in a Netflix film, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”

Deadline reported that Netflix will focus mainly on what social networks do in the short squeeze of GameStop. A Netflix staff said that the movie will highlight the role of social media platforms in helping the masses fight in an unfair playing field against the Establishment whose goal is to maintain the status quo.

MGM last Friday acquired the rights of a book whose working title is ”The Antisocial Network,” written by best-selling author Ben Mezrich who is currently working on a book on GameStop. The new book will deal with rag-tag investors gathering on a subreddit for stock investment discussions named “WallStreetBets,” the epicenter of the uprising against hedge funds. Director Aaron Ryder of the Academy-nominated film “Contact” will take the helm of an MGM-produced film.


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