Five years after the short squeeze, GameStop’s CEO is betting on a ‘genius or totally foolish’ $100 billion-plus acquisition

GameStop was once the go-to destination for video games. Then it was the archetypal “meme stock” in 2021, when a band of Reddit-reading retail investors thwarted hedge funds’ shorts on the company stock, sending the company’s stock skyrocketing. There was even a movie about it. But its eccentric, some would say visionary, is back with a plan that he thinks could rival the wild days of half a decade ago.

Despite that selloff, the company’s CEO Ryan Cohen said in an interview with The...