This study utilizes the broadcast of the popular television series Game of Hunting in mainland China as a quasi-natural experiment to examine how investor attention impacts stock price volatility. The empirical findings reveal that the broadcast of Game of Hunting increased stock price volatility for headhunting companies. Notably, headhunting companies that attracted lower levels of investor attention before the broadcast exhibited greater stock price volatility. Conversely, headhunting companies with more complex business operations, which posed greater challenges for investors in processing information, experienced smaller fluctuations in stock prices. The broadcast of Game of Hunting drew retail investors’ attention to headhunting stocks, prompting them to purchase these stocks. This attention-driven buying then triggered arbitrage behavior by other retail investors, who sold the stocks, ultimately causing fluctuations in the share prices of headhunting companies. In contrast, institutional investors’ trading of these stocks was neither affected by the popularity of Game of Hunting nor influenced by the trading behavior of retail investors.