Hulu's Pam & Tommy director Craig Gillespie has signed on to direct an upcoming movie about the 2021 GameStop stock debacle. Although the Australian-American filmmaker has a mixed bag of credits in various genres, Gillespie has stood out when adapting true stories to the big screen. He made a name for himself with the critically acclaimed I, Tonya, a film about Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding. Gillespie followed that up with the 2021 Disney hit Cruella, an origin story of the 101 Dalmatians villain Cruella De Vil.
Deadline reports that director Craig Gillespie is slated to direct a new movie centered on the trading shenanigans surrounding amateur investors buying GameStop stock and driving the price up to mess with a few hedge funds that were essentially betting GameStop stock prices would fall. The film will be based on the book The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich. The book details how a small group of amateur investors associated with the Reddit community WallStreetBets took down one of the largest hedge funds on Wall Street while earning millions and grabbing the attention of the world.
MGM was quick to act, securing the rights to Mezrich's book proposal as the GameStop shorting event was still unfolding in January 2021. Shortly thereafter, writing partners Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum of Orange Is the New Black fame were hired to pen the screenplay. The upcoming film marks another book-to-screen adaptation for writer Ben Mezrich following Bringing Down the House, which was turned into the gambling thriller 21, and Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal which became the generation-defining hit The Social Network.
Source: Deadline
