MGM has been making serious moves as of recently. MGM’s extensive film library consists of more than 4,000 titles and 17,000 hours of television programming, including the Rocky and The Hobbit film franchises, as well as award-winning blockbusters such as Silence of the Lambs and Rain Main. Among the television, content are series such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Vikings. MGM also discussed selling No Time To Die to Apple, with the tech company one of the only streaming services in play for the 007 films.
Apple reportedly considered an offer in the $350 million to $400 million range. At the time of those discussions, CEO of Vogel Capital Research Hal Vogel confirmed that “MGM is suffering.” He added, “Every major distributor at this point has a pile of unreleased expensive movies. The pile grows larger by the day.”
According to a report by Deadline, MGM has acquired the film rights to a book proposal for The Antisocial Network, an in-the-works book author Ben Mezrich that will detail last week’s wild Wall Street GameStop stock controversy. Per the report, Mezrich’s proposal was on the market by the end of last week with MGM moving fast to acquire it and will see MGM’s Michael DeLuca working with Mezrich a second time — DeLuca produced The Social Network, which was based on Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, a Tale Of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.
At least two hedge funds, betting that shares of GameStop would fall, engaged in something called shorting — essentially borrowing stock, selling it for one price, and then waiting for its price to fall so they could buy it back at the much lower price, thus making a profit. However, a group of investors on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets started buying shares of GameStop which in turn increased its market value in a huge way creating a “short squeeze” that forced the hedge funds into losing a lot of money and prompted one hedge fund, Melvin Capital, to need an over $2 billion bailout. Making things even more interesting is that it isn’t just GameStop stock involved at this point.
Other stocks, such as AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia have also been the target of the so-called Reddit investors which has, in turn, prompted trading app Robinhood to put restrictions on certain stocks and generally bring a to of attention to the stock market generally by groups who might not ordinarily pay that much attention.
As for Mezrich’s book and MGM’s involvement, according to Deadline Aaron Ryder of Ryder Picture Company will produce while Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss will executive produce via Winklevoss Pictures. Mezrich’s book is expected to head to auction for publishers in February.
