The story of how Reddit investors took on Wall Street over Gamestop shares now has its director, over a year after the project’s initial announcement.
Last February saw one of the speediest film announcements ever, with a movie being announced based on a book that wasn’t even written, which in turn was focused on events that only unfolded the week before. Is your head spinning yet?
With the wheels turning so quickly at the outset, it’s unsurprising that things then slowed down somewhat, with the book in question needing to be researched and written before the film could move into development.
The Antisocial Network then will be based on Ben Mezrich’s book, also called The Antisocial Network, which promises to tell the story of how a group of Reddit users managed to throw Wall Street’s established stock investors into a state of panic. To the point where one trading app caused a huge controversy by suspending trading on certain stocks. In particular, the US video game store, Gamestop.
It’s been over a year since that whirlwind announcement, which means that development has progressed enough for the project to announce its director. Craig Gillespie will be helming the film and the Cruella, I, Tonya and Pam & Tommy director seems like a great choice to bring his heightened reality sensibilities to this real life story, injecting a tale which is essentially about stocks and numbers on screens with some colour and imagination.
Mezrich is also the author of The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale Of Sex, Money, Genius And Betrayal. That particular story would go on to be adapted by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher into 2010’s The Social Network, one of the decade’s best films, which was not only a critical success but made a lot of money too. That’s why the film’s title is a cheeky reference to Fincher’s film. The links don’t end there either: Also involved as executive producers are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, whose involvement in the founding of Facebook was chronicled in The Social Network.
MGM has picked up the rights and the subject seems perfect too for Mezrich, who will get to explore another tale of young, digital-savvy upstarts upsetting the wealthy establishment. It was a formula that worked perfectly in The Social Network and Gillespie seems like an inspired choice for director. The project is set to shoot in late summer and we’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
Image: BigStock
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
