LOS ANGELES — It was only a matter of time before Hollywood moved to adapt the GameStop stock market drama into a feature film — a matter of about a week, to be exact.
MGM Studios has already acquired rights to "The Antisocial Network," a book proposal by bestselling author Ben Mezrich about a group of novice investors, video game enthusiasts and online trolls who took the stock market by storm, The Times confirmed Monday.
The project is inspired by last week's events, which saw a band of Reddit users coordinate to screw over Wall Street hedge fund investors who had been betting on the steady decline of brick-and-mortar companies, including GameStop and AMC Theatres.
Mezrich wrote penned the hit 2009 book "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal," which was adapted by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin into "The Social Network." The 2010 film, which chronicled the early evolution of Facebook through the eyes of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), won three Oscars, including adapted screenplay.
According to Deadline, twin entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played in "The Social Network" by Armie Hammer) are set to executive produce MGM's upcoming adaptation through their production company, Winklevoss Pictures. Mezrich's as-yet-unwritten book will be auctioned off to publishers in February.
News of the production deal comes days after the Reddit-versus-Wall Street showdown dominated the news cycle and social media, which were teeming with memes and explainers attempting to make sense of the landmark event.
A number of late-night talk show hosts also tried their hand at illustrating the confounding stock market frenzy last week via Beanie Baby analogies and parodies of financial dramas such as "The Big Short" and "The Wolf of Wall Street." And last week, The Times caught up with Avalon Penrose, a Los Angeles comedian who went viral on Twitter for her video hilariously explaining the short-squeeze situation in ultra-laymen's terms.
"I was coming from a place of authenticity of not having any idea what the f— was going on," comic and actress Penrose told The Times on Thursday. "And I think that everyone else was experiencing the same thing."
