The GameStop meme stock drama was one of the biggest stories of 2021 in the financial and technology spheres, and there are multiple films based on it in the works. One of them is called GameStop: Rise to the Players, and now the first trailer and poster for it have arrived.
The documentary covers the origin of the GameStop “stock market phenomenon” in 2021, featuring some of the “original players who lit the fuse on a historic amateur investing uprising.”
“Spotlighting the human side of a sensational business drama, Gamestop: Rise of the Players is a David vs. Goliath tale about ordinary people waking up to the power they have in numbers,” reads a line from its description. The movie opens in theaters on January 28.
The film is directed by Jonah Tulis, who previously made the movie Console Wars that documented the battle between Nintendo and Sega in the ’90s. Blake J. Harris, who co-directed that movie and wrote the book it was based on, is a producer on GameStop: Rise to the Players, alongside Dan Braun and Josh Braun.
In addition to this film, MGM purchased the rights to Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees. Mezrich previously wrote Bringing Down The House, which was adapted for the 2008 drama 21 starring Kevin Spacey, Jim Sturgess, and Laurence Fishburne. Mezrich’s other popular book, The Accidental Billionaires, told the story of the founding of Facebook. It would later be adapted for the Oscar-winning movie The Social Network starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg.
In January 2021, GameStop’s share price exploded due in part to investors on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets subreddit and other forums taking aim at the institutional investors who were “shorting” the stock. This created what’s known as a “short squeeze,” and GameStop’s share price blasted off to record heights. After trading at under $5 per share, the stock exploded above $500, making some people incredibly wealthy, at least on paper. The company’s share price has since fallen back down, but it’s still above $100 per share today, making it very lucrative for a group of people.
GameStop is now being run by Ryan Cohen, the billionaire founder of the pet food company Chewy.
