The studio has seen the success of mainstream movies about consumer products, such as Air (Jordans), Barbie, Blackberry, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Tetris, and the new Pop Tart one. They also figure that The Social Network took home some Oscars, so what the hell… Now they’ve hired you to write and direct a movie about Reddit and the average Redditor. What is the story about? Who’s in it? How do you depict the cursed site?
Yeah I was thinking something along those lines. The drama is there
You could even spin it with a positive ending. Create the narrative of Reddit going from a “free speech” hate filled corner of the internet used by dubious characters, to “the front page of the internet”, a website used by everyone which is socially progressive, with the ending cumulating with Ohanian leaving Reddit and demanding a black executive take his place after the George Floyd protests.
Of course, this narrative’s relationship with the truth is weak at best, but this never matters with these kind of movies.
The film is told from radical centrist Ohanian’s POV, with Swartz being the leftist idealist believing in free speech and Huffman being some technolibertarian fascist. Swartz commits suicide because Huffman was mean to him, and Reddit turns into a technolibertarian fascist cesspool as Huffman strongarms Ohanian into ignoring /r/jailbait and /r/The_Donald. Throughout the film, Ohanian constantly struggles with his nagging conscience and guilt of not preventing Swartz’s suicide, but after marrying Williams, he decides to finally face his inner demons and takes a stand by leaving Reddit during the George Floyd uprising.