HBO's 'Gaming Wall Street' Documentary Explores GameStop Short Squeeze: Will You Watch?

Biltmore Films released Thursday a new documentary featuring GameStop Corp GME and the retail trading frenzy that surrounded the video game retailer's stock at the beginning of 2021.

What To Know: "Gaming Wall Street" is exclusively available on AT&T Inc's T HBO Max. The two-part documentary, directed by Tobias Deml, focuses on the events that created a massive short squeeze in GameStop's stock and brought retail traders together in a fight against financial institutions.

According to a TV Guide review, the two episodes are "wildly different." The first focuses on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets community where the retail movement originated.

The word going around was that a bunch of traders were coming together to stick it to the Wall Street hedge funds who had supposedly spent much of their lives profiting off the little guy using manipulative market tactics.

The episode dives into the individual lives of some of those retail traders and explores their thought processes as they "aped" into GameStop stock. 

"It's lighthearted and mostly entertaining, plumbing the depths of one of the most insane places on the internet, populated by the smartest and dumbest people (sometimes both at the same time) on the internet," according to TV Guide.

A Short Seller Joins Benzinga's 'Power Hour' To Talk GameStop. The Rest Is History.

The second half of the series focuses more on the trading restrictions that Robinhood Markets Inc HOOD implemented near the heights of the short squeeze. Many traders attribute the subsequent declines to Robinhood's unprecedented actions.

The episode also dives into naked short selling practices in search of the truth behind the extreme volatility.

"There's nothing here that anyone who has followed the story doesn't know — it's mostly a recap of events and an explanation of some terms peppered with people saying what might have been going on behind the scenes — but it will once again piss you off how these financial institutions get away with everything while ordinary people pay the price," TV Guide said.

Check out the official trailer for the documentary series here:

GME Price Action: GameStop traded as high as $348.50 during regular market hours and touched $480 in premarket trading during the January 2021 squeeze.

The stock trades at around $121.44 at press time