| GameStop: Rise of the Players | |
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 Poster | |
| Directed by | Jonah Tulis |
| Produced by |
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| Music by | Jeff Beal [1] |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Neon Super LTD |
Release date |
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Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $126,297 [3] [4] |
GameStop: Rise of the Players is a 2022 American documentary film directed by Jonah Tulis and produced by Blake J. Harris, who worked on Console Wars together.
The documentary chronicles the GameStop short squeeze of 2021 which saw GameStop's stock rise over 2,500% amidst rampant volatility. This story is told mostly from the viewpoint of several value investors who participated in sharing their due diligence on social media, most notably Roaring Kitty's YouTube streams.
In the United States, the film earned $74,782 from 267 theaters in its opening weekend. [13]
The documentary holds a 79% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 14 reviews. [14]
Noel Murray at the Los Angeles Times felt that the film was strong from a stylistic and journalistic standpoint and that it did a great job of humanizing the players and supported a business instead of rooting for its failure. [15]
Richard Whittaker at the Austin Chronicle found the documentary to be an "interesting analysis of the bubble in GameStop stock," yet he also criticized its "obnoxious enthusiasm" for not showing that the short squeeze investors are also stock market speculators that left the stock behind in a state as volatile as ever. [16]
Josiah Teal at Film Threat stated the film was "tailor-made for a Reddit-savvy audience," and it "captures the unbridled essence of the Internet in a way gamers and meme-lords will adore." [17]
Owen Good at Polygon stated the film introduced nine ordinary people, "who aren’t just the good guys of this story, they’re the best kinds of subjects a documentarian could want." Agreeing with the film's choice to call these nine investors “heroes,” Good believes the title fits. The senior reporter states that the real victory is the validation these investors found, not because they were proven right, but because they were willing to be wrong with all of their money, and that you can’t say the same about the big guys who lost billions of someone else’s. [18]
Investor relations (IR) is a "strategic management responsibility that is capable of integrating finance, communication, marketing and securities law compliance to enable the most effective two-way communication between a company, the financial community, and other constituencies, which ultimately contributes to a company's securities achieving fair valuation." as defined by National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI). IR is also function to assess the impact of a company actions on the company's position in the capital markets.
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. As of 28 January 2023, the company operates 4,413 stores including 2,949 in the United States, 216 in Canada, 419 in Australia and 829 in Europe under the GameStop, EB Games, EB Games Australia, Micromania-Zing, ThinkGeek and Zing Pop Culture brands. The company was founded in Dallas in 1984 as Babbage's, and took on its current name in 1999.
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial intermediaries. The firm has assets under management of more than $1.6 trillion and annual revenues of $6.2 billion as of 2020, placing it 447 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. companies. Headquartered at 100 East Pratt Street in Baltimore, Maryland, it has 5,000 employees in Baltimore and 16 international offices serving clients in 47 countries.
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Charles J. Gradante is an American businessman in the hedge fund industry, appearing on television and before the United States Congress in that role. Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute's PensionDaily.com called Gradante "one of Wall Street's most sought after opinion leaders" for financial and economic areas. Gradante is known as one of the first hedge fund industry executives to spark a legendary debate about the risk of hedge funds growing too large rather than focusing on finding investments where they have a competitive edge; he most recently discussed the issue at a conference hosted by The Palm Beach Hedge Fund Association that was covered by Yahoo Finance and CorpGov.
Kavin Bharti Mittal is an Indian internet entrepreneur primarily known for his role as the founder and CEO of Hike, the company behind the unicorn Hike Messenger and the Rush Gaming Universe (RGU), a mobile gaming application.
Dan David is an American investor, activist short-seller and whistle-blower. He is the founder of New York-based Wolfpack Research, a financial research and due diligence investigation firm that was started in 2019 with support from short-seller Muddy Waters Research. In the fall of 2017, David and his work as a whistle-blower and China expert were the focus of the documentary film The China Hustle, which depicts how fraudulent Chinese companies stole billions of dollars from U.S. investors and retirees. In 2018, David was the Republican candidate for congress in Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional District, which includes Montgomery and Berks counties. He is the host of the "I Hung Up On Warren Buffett" podcast.
Ryan Cohen is a Canadian entrepreneur and activist investor. He founded e-commerce company Chewy in 2011, and was the company's chief executive office (CEO) until 2018. Cohen currently serves as the chairman and CEO of GameStop.
Vladimir Tenev is a Bulgarian-American entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood, a US-based financial technology services company.
Melvin Capital Management LP was an American investment management firm based in New York City. It was founded in 2014 by Gabriel Plotkin, who named the firm after his late grandfather.
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Webull Corporation is a holding company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in New York. Its subsidiaries operate an electronic trading platform, accessible via mobile app and desktop computer, offering commission-free and low-cost trading of stocks, exchange traded funds, options, margins, and cryptocurrencies. Its U.S.-based subsidiary, Webull Financial LLC, is a security broker registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a member of FINRA and SIPC, offering trading services to customers in the U.S. It also has licensed subsidiaries offering trading services in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Keith Patrick Gill is an American financial analyst and investor known for his posts on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets. His analyses of GameStop stock, and details of his resulting investment gains—posted on Reddit under the username DeepFuckingValue (DFV) and on YouTube and Twitter as Roaring Kitty—were cited as a driving factor in the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021, and as a spark for the subsequent trading frenzy in retail stocks. The rising stock value allowed Gill to turn a US$53,000 investment into one worth close to $50 million.
In January 2021, a short squeeze of the stock of the American video game retailer GameStop and other securities took place, causing major financial consequences for certain hedge funds and large losses for short sellers. Approximately 140 percent of GameStop's public float had been sold short, and the rush to buy shares to cover those positions as the price rose caused it to rise even further. The short squeeze was initially and primarily triggered by users of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets, an Internet forum on the social news website Reddit, although a number of hedge funds also participated. At its height, on January 28, the short squeeze caused the retailer's stock price to reach a pre-market value of over US$500 per share, nearly 30 times the $17.25 valuation at the beginning of the month. The price of many other heavily shorted securities and cryptocurrencies also increased.
Citadel Securities LLC is an American market making firm headquartered in Miami. It is one of the largest market makers in the world, and is active in more than 50 countries. It is the largest designated market maker on the New York Stock Exchange. Citadel Securities is a separate entity from the hedge fund Citadel LLC, although both were founded and are majority owned by American hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin. Citadel Securities is expected to eventually move its headquarters from Chicago to Miami, having bought land there to build its new headquarters.
Stake is an Australian financial services company headquartered in Sydney, Australia. It was founded in 2017 by Matt Leibowitz and Dan Silver. Stake predominately offers low-cost brokerage services to retail investors in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
Gaming Wall St is a HBO Max Original documentary miniseries directed by Tobias Deml and narrated by Kieran Culkin. The 2-episode series explores the causes that lead to the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, and the dark underbelly of Wall Street that the phenomenon unearthed: payment for order flow, creative accounting, abuses of the short selling mechanism like naked short selling, corporate overvoting and failures to deliver (FTDs).
Dumb Money is a 2023 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo. It is based on the 2021 book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich and chronicles the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and Seth Rogen.