Sony wins rights to Dumb Money, the coveted Gamestop film

Dumb Money, which features some notable names, was formerly at MGM before being snapped up by Sony Pictures. One of the hottest free projects on the market has been snapped up by a major studio for the second time. The new Netflix documentary series Eat The Rich has shone a light back onto the infamous Gamestop/Wall Street story which dominated the headlines a year or two back, and saw three or four competing film projects announced. The first (and perhaps highest in profile) project to tackle this story was MGM’s planned dramatic take, Dumb Money. The  film will follow a group of Reddit users who manage to throw Wall Street’s established stock investors into a state of panic, to the point where one app took the controversial step of suspending trading on videogame store Gamestop’s stocks. However, after a prolonged period of silence, it emerged last month that MGM was no longer handling the project. Instead, Black Bear Productions has taken over production of the film and Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Sebastian Stan and Pete Davison would star. Along with the promising cast, this project is the one that has secured the rights to adapt Ben Mezrich’s book, which documents all of the ins and outs of the Gamestop shares controversy. Mezrich is also the author of The Accidental Billionaires, that would go on to be adapted by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher into 2010’s The Social Network, generally considered to be a landmark film in detailing this type of corporate misadventure and flawed human behaviour. As such, when distribution rights for the film went up at the Toronto Film this month, Dumb Money was considered to be a very hot property and it is Sony who have landed it, including the US and European rights, as well as several other key markets. This continues the studio’s ongoing commitment to giving theatrical releases to the kind of grown-up, non-franchise dramas that other studios have become increasingly wary of. Shooting is slated to begin this month with Craig Gillespie directing, reuniting him with Rogen and Stan as the trio worked together on the recent drama series, Pam And Tommy. We’ll bring you more on Dumb Money as we hear it. Deadline

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