While we’ve seen a race in Hollywood to option a fictionalized version of the Reddit traders who rocked Wall Street with their investing in the “meme stock” GameStop, a new documentary is also in the works about the online traders on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets.
The documentary studios XTR and The Optimist are developing a feature documentary film about the ongoing “short squeeze movement,” which over the last few days has caused GameStop stock prices to surge and send more traditional hedge funds that were shorting the stock into a panic.
The untitled documentary film was in part funded by a Kickstarter campaign and is already undergoing interviews with key players of the movement, even as the story continues to unfold.
The Optimist’s Chris Temple and Zach Ingrasci, who are known for last year’s immigration documentary “Five Years North,” will direct the film about how the GameStop saga has sparked a global movement against Wall Street and captured the imagination of a new generation of investors. The film is described as what will be a thrilling tale of hope, greed and manipulation that promises to go far beyond a single stock and forever change how we see our financial future.
The untitled GameStop documentary will be produced by Jenna Kelly and executive produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Bryn Mooser and XTR’s head of development, Justin Lacob. This will be the second partnership between the directors and Mooser, who served as an executive producer on their 2015 feature documentary, “Salam Neighbor.”
“This story is still evolving daily. And it’s so important to have a strong, nuanced documentary that can capture this landmark moment as it unfolds, through the perspective of the key people and forces that are shaping it,” Temple said in a statement.
“The Robinhood GameStop saga is shaping up to be one of the most exciting stories of the year with far reaching consequences about the future of the financial markets and America’s distaste for the standard institutional investors,” Lacob said in a statement. “Similar to Fyre Festival, America is infatuated with these events and we’re excited to give audiences the full picture, especially as it continues to unfold.”
In addition to “Five Years North,” Temple and Ingrasci also directed the HBO documentary short “The Undocumented Lawyer.”
XTR is a backer on eight different documentary films that all premiered at this year’s Sundance, including “Ailey” and the winner of the U.S. Documentary Directing prize “Users.” XTR is also behind films such as “76 Days,” “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” and “You Cannot Kill David Arquette,” and the studio also just launched a streaming platform for non-fiction films, Documentary+