It’s sort of funny that it’s taken this long to announce a GameStop stonks movie. When the initial, infamous short squeeze happened in January 2021, it seemed like everyone immediately announced a documentary about the event that was still unfolding. A handful have already come out, but we’ve yet to see a true Hollywood take on the subject until now.
According to Variety, Seth Rogen will lead the cast for Craig Gillespie‘s Dumb Money alongside Paul Dano, Sebastian Stan, and Pete Davidson. No word on who is playing whom.
The movie is based off the book The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by Ben Mezrich, an author continually attempting to outdo the length of his titles. 21 and The Social Network were also based on Mezrich’s books. Social disruption, big money, and tech are his favorite wheelhouses, and they all collide for this story. Luckily, more than a year and a half into the saga, there’s even more information about how all of it has unfolded, giving Gillespie a chance to really make his film worthwhile.
Otherwise, it’s a cash-in on hype. Luckily, Gillespie — who worked with Rogen and Stan for Pam & Tommy — is one of the best for mining human absurdity for something with heart. Of the people who might be involved in a project like this, these are some of the least worrisome. This should fall into the lineage of movies like The Big Short, which found success explaining complicated economic swindling into darkly funny, digestible bites. But unlike the Adam McKay film with Margot Robbie explaining sub-prime loans in a bubble bath, we’re still potentially in the middle of GameStop stock drama, with a group of retail investors, convinced that there’s a bigger squeeze yet to come, directly registering their shares so that they’re untouchable to short sellers.
Confused yet? Where’s Seth Rogen in a bubble bath when you need him?
(via Variety)