Netflix Gamestop Movie Risks Same ‘Fever Pitch’ Fate As ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

Mark Boal is being hired to pen a Netflix movie about the current GameStop stock surge. But the writer of Zero Dark Thirty knows that how the story ends will be as important as how the story began.

We just got word from Deadline that Netflix has officially greenlit a movie about the still-ongoing financial drama concerning social media-fueled day traders and hedge funds which (among other things) caused stock for GameStop and AMC to soar to unprecedented and seemingly implausible heights. Mark Boals is in talks to write an untitled picture concerning the big picture implications of this theoretical David V Goliath story in terms of the stock market, vulture capitalism and related income inequities. It is now in competition with MGM which just optioned the film rights to Ben Mezrich’s book proposal about the (again still-developing) events. Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires was one core source for Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s The Social Network.

I am amused that Mark Boal is again chronicling the film version of a major historical event has yet to be concluded. Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow followed up the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker with Zero Dark Thirty, a deep-dive chronicle concerning America’s unsuccessful hunt for Osama Bin Laden in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “Alas,” Navy Seals found and killed Bin Laden in May of 2011, which required some massive rewrites for the still-in-production feature film. The Jessica Chastain-starring drama opened to strong reviews and decent box office ($133 million on a $40 million budget), but took a major hit during the awards season over charges that it implied that torture was a key element in eventually locating Bin Laden.

I remain of the mindset that A) the film presented torture as immoral and soul-crushing for those participating even for the proverbial “greater good” and B) that some act of torture may have indirectly played a role in Bin Laden’s death nearly a decade later doesn’t exactly affirm a case of one-to-one causation. Moreover, and this is key, when the film was being made, Bin Laden was at large, and it was somewhat presumed that he would remain free indefinitely. That we eventually found the guy fundamentally altered the reception of what was supposed to be a Moby Dick-like passion play. Even a “new” ending didn’t make the grim, violent and self-reflective grown up drama into “America, f** yeah!” propaganda.

At the time, I compared Zero Dark Thirty to the Farrelly Bros.’ Fever Pitch. That mostly winning rom-com adaptation of Nick Horny’s novel, starring Jimmy Fallon as a Red Sox fanatic and Drew Barrymore as a girlfriend coming to terms with his obsessive fandom, was thrown a curve ball when the Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. Sure, it was fun seeing the filmmakers actually insert Fallon and Barrymore into the real-time victory celebration as the team broke “the Curse of the Bambino”. However, it fundamentally changed what was at least partially a mediation on the one-sided nature of sports/culture fandom. It was another Moby Dick story where, whoops, they caught the white whale after all.

I’m sure Boal is aware that he’s again tempting fate by writing a filmed variation on present-tense history. Will the underdogs triumph over the Wall Street tycoons? Will Goliath gain the upper hand on David? Or will the new rebels eventually become the new villains? Generalizations aside, I would imagine how this story ends for the participants will at least somewhat dictate what the movie is “about” in terms of character-specific arcs and big picture themes. The story started with Kevin Gill rallying Reddit user to rally against hedge funds short selling GameStop which sent the stock soaring 135% on a single day. We don’t yet know how the story, and thus this movie (which may star Noah Centinteo) will end.

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I’ve studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for nearly 30 years. I have extensively written about all

I’ve studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for nearly 30 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last 11 years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing scholarship have included The Huffington Post, Salon, and Film Threat. Follow me at @ScottMendelson and “like” The Ticket Booth on Facebook.


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