EXCLUSIVEAs Wall Street developments unfold in real time in the David V Goliath battle between hedge funds and social media-fueled day traders that drove GameStop’s stock up 135% in one day, a bull market is developing for projects that describe this unprecedented episode and the bigger implications.
Deadline learns that Netflix is in talks to make a self-titled movie that Mark Boal is negotiating to write. He is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Noah Centineo will star – Centineo starred in the Netflix movie To all the guys 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 film Black Adam. Scott Galloway, the activist / journalist and NYU pro and a tech issues expert who works with the popular To turn podcast, is in conversation to consult the script.
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‘Black Adam’ adds Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher
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Makeready founder / CEO Brad Weston will produce the film with Nick Styne of Definition Entertainment, with Mark Sourian on board as executive producer.
This follows on the heels of last night’s Deadline scoop that MGM acquired by bidding on a book proposal from Ben Mezrich on GameStop trading. His previous books include The Accidental Billionaires, which became a pillar of it The social network.
Netflix declined comment on the Mark Boal project, but sources said it intends to use the GameStop episode as a specific way to shine a light on the phenomenon of how social media has leveled the playing field and the masses allowed to challenge status quo gatekeepers, for good and bad. Examples range from the stock spike for GameStop, AMC and other previously underperforming stocks subject to short-selling maneuvers from multi-billion dollar hedge funds, to the spread on social media of unfounded election fraud allegations conveyed by conservative social media sites and Trump Tweets inciting right-wing extremists to storm the Capitol as President Biden’s election was confirmed, leading to the deaths of five people
The ripples of the Reddit uprising have hit the core of some hedge funds in a way that is reminiscent of the greedy subprime mortgage bundling that sparked the 2008 financial collapse, captured in the Oscar-winning The big short, which New Regency co-financed while Weston ran that manufacturing company. That film will certainly serve as a model for the GameStop dissection, and sources said several potential rival projects are mobilizing to tell the story.
The general rule in the emergence of competing projects is that the first in production is often the only one to be created. Netflix takes its photos quickly, and Boal seems ideal for such a real-time exercise. He and director Kathryn Bigelow were working on a movie about a failed hunt for Osama Bin Laden, but the moment President Barack Obama announced that the mastermind of 9/11 had been killed by Navy SEALs, they quickly turned around and built the manhunt story to the best. Photo nominee Zero Dark Thirty. The turnaround time at that pivot point was remarkably fast.
The drama about GameStop’s stock surge continues to play out in today’s stock trading. The phenomenon was led by Kevin Gill, who rallied Reddit users to rebel against hedge funds that are heavily betting on the physical video game retailer GameStop. Although it fluctuates daily, a $ 53,000 investment in GameStop he made in 2019 turned into a position of nearly $ 48 million, according to his Reddit posts. Gill has not yet sold his life rights. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets knocked on his door a few times from Hollywood, but this drama takes place so publicly in real time that it’s unclear how important rights will be in telling this story on screen.
Boal and Galloway are represented by WME, Centineo by CAA and Definition Entertainment.