The STUNT CAPITALIST

How AMC's Adam Aron transformed himself from a corporate operator into a meme-spewing, gold-mine-buying, populist folk hero for an army of newbie investors

- Felix Gillette and Eliza Ronalds-Hannon

For most movie fans, their dreamselfie with a Hollywood star never quite materializes. But on a Friday night in June, Bruce and Deborah Cooke spotted one of their favorite movie heroes, just feet away. They moved in and asked for a photo.

Adam Aron, the chairman and chief executive officer of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., greeted the couple warmly, making small talk as they arranged themselves for the camera. Bruce was dressed in slacks and a button-down. Deborah wore a striking green dress. “I put my arm around you, I go to jail,” Aron, who’s 67, playfully said to Deborah, who’s 55. Everyone laughed.

Three days earlier, Aron had announced on Twitter that he would personally be hosting a screening of Pixar’s new movie, Lightyear, at an AMC theater in Olathe, Kan. The Cookes, who together own a small mortgage company in Sacramento, had vowed on the spot to make the pilgrimage to Kansas.

The entire AMC saga meant so much to them. During the onset of the pandemic, when movie theaters were hastily shuttered, they bought their first batch of AMC stock. Moviegoing, they believed, would eventually bounce back. Plus, they thought it was cruel that a subset of investors were trying to force the company into bankruptcy. So the Cookes joined a legion of outsider traders, loosely organized on the Reddit forum r/wallstreetbets, who were swarming to AMC’s down-and-out stock, driving up its share price and sticking it to the skeptical short sellers and hedge funds betting big on the company’s failure. The Cookes recruited their loved ones to join them. “We got a lot of friends involved,” Deborah says.

On social media, people started calling their pugnacious tribe the AMC  Apes, as in