The filmmakers behind Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets, call the story behind the Reddit users’ revolt over the retailer GameStop a “perfect storm.”
The project, which will have its premiere at SXSW on March 13 and then air at 10 PM ET on April 10 on MSNBC, tells the story of the Reddit users who, early last year, coordinated to drive up the price of the faltering company GameStop to counter major hedge fund short sellers. What happened became a sensation, as attention focused not only on the impact on the market, with GameStop shares soaring 1700%, but the Robinhood trading app, which allowed average users to buy and sell shares at a whim.
Zackary Canepari, director of the project along with Drea Cooper, said that what happened was “a one of a kind situation. This only happened because there was a pandemic and stimulus checks and boredom and social media and populism, this perfect app, this perfect company, and all of these kinds of things just coming together. Once we started to talk to the characters I think we just knew that this was a really a special group of people to understand what they went through.”
Cooper said that “the story itself is about this massive group of thousands if not millions of people who connected online, who essentially rallied together to push the stock, and push the stock up. …The biggest challenge at that point is how do we narrow down to a few key characters and a few key voices who can kind of bring that story to life.”
He also said that they set out to get to the origins of WallStreetBets. “Where did this idea even begin, that GameStop even had a potential for a squeeze? … So it became in some ways sort of like an investigative piece. We had to do this deep dive to put this puzzle together.”
Elizabeth Fischer, head of current production for NBC News Studios, said that the project’s origins go back to April, 2020, when Erica Fink, one of the executives in their development department, began to look into the WallStreetBets and “she was really taken by the whole culture of the group and the sort of nihilism they had toward society, and how casual they were on betting the farm on things that really were very high risk.” With stimulus checks going out during pandemic lockdowns, “they directed their energy toward making these crazy bets. And when they banded together they found that they could actually move the market.”
Fink stayed in touch with a lot of the players in WallStreetBets, and when the price of GameStop skyrocketed, “we really had all of our interviewees lined up.” NBC News Studios then approached MSNBC Films about the project, and Canepari and Cooper, whose credits also include Netflix’s Flint Town, were enlisted to direct. Amanda Spain, vice president of longform acquisitions for MSNBC Films, said that the filmmakers took something that “we’d all heard about. We all knew this had happened, but not very many people actually understood what happened.They put this group together of all sorts of different people from all different backgrounds and different worlds, who speak from the heart and are completely honest and real like you haven’t seen.”
After one day of interviews, they filmmakers went to a restaurant for dinner. As it turned out, their waitress, Alisha Woods, was among those who was in WallStreetBets. By the end of their meal, they set up an interview with her the next day.
“Just like everyone has got a different version of the pandemic story, her pandemic story is her on unemployment, trying to figure out what to do. ‘I am going to start investing what little I had and see what happens.’ And that is what led her down this path,” Canepari said.
The documentary sheds light on why so many poured their savings into something so high risk, what with home prices out of reach for so many and a distrust of other traditional investment options.
As it turned out, Woods lost her money when, as GameStop’s share price skyrocketed, the Robinhood platform restricted trading in it. Then Woods turned to cryptocurrency.
“Crypto became this thing, this new idea, this decentralized way of dealing with money and value and all of the sudden, she’s got this new thing she’s believing in,” Cooper said.
Also featured are analysts like Mike Novogratz and Andrew Left, and other retail investors “Jeff Amazon” and “Sir Jackalot.”
“This was an incredible coming together of perfect scenarios,” Canepari said. “”Now, will it happen again? I have no idea. Is it the future? I don’t really know, but I know that the price of the stock is back down to some average number.”
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