The GameStop saga is being made into a movie and the first preview has dropped

It was one of the wildest stories of 2021, and now the Gamestop drama which saw amateur investors on social media buy into the video game retailer and shock Wall Street is being turned into a movie starring The Batman’s Paul Dano.

As a reminder, Redditors in the subreddit ‘WallStreetBets’ decided to carry out a “short squeeze” on Gamestop’s stock – taking the share price from just over $17 to almost $150 – in a battle against giant hedge funds who were planning to short-sell or bet against the company’s share price.

In layman’s terms, short-selling is when an organisation or individual borrows shares in a company from someone else, in anticipation of said company’s share prices falling.

After borrowing from the broker, they’ll then sell these shares at the current market rate, before the price is expected to fall.

If and when it does, the individual or company buys back these shares to return them to the person they borrowed from, in the hope of making some profit.

To use an example, someone could borrow shares in a company at $100 in the hopes the price will drop to $90. They sell these shares at $100, wait for it to fall to $90 before buying them back, and then they can pocket the $10 difference.

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Except Reddit users weren’t so keen on big businesses seeking to gain from the misfortune of their beloved Gamestop, so bought shares to drive up the price, so it would rise, not fall as the company’s initially anticipated.

And it worked. According to data analytics company S3, hedge funds and others that bet against Gamestop lost more than $5 billion collectively.

Ouch.

The incredible scenes sparked a book called The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich, which has now formed the basis for the aforementioned film featuring Dano in the lead role of Keith Gill.

Both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes also list Knocked Up actor Seth Rogen, Divergent star Shailene Woodley and Marvel actor Sebastian Stan as being involved in the project, which is called Dumb Money.

Oh, and former Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson is involved too.

And from the limited information available, Twitter users seem to be pretty on board with the premise and Dano's involvement, with many referencing the classic 'Does He Know' meme.

A sneak peek of the film was shown to attendees at CinemaCon in Las Vegas last night – an event for “movie theater owners from around the world” – and thankfully the entertainment outlet DiscussingFilmjotted down a description of the teaser.

First off, it showed Seth Rogan’s hedge fund leader looking to move into a beach-side mansion, only to learn about the Redditors’ short squeeze and sprint to a computer in his other mansion where he’s getting phone calls from fellow investors amid the chaos.

“At the same time as this is happening, Cardi B’s WAP is playing in the background as we’re slowly introduced to Keith Gill, who’s this scrawny-looking nerd running laps at his local track field,” the description reads.

Iconic.

Dumb Money is due to be released into cinemas on 20 October.

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