Jennifer Lawrence - Elizabeth Holmes (BAD BLOOD) #1: Call it Joy with a thoroughly dispiriting third act in place of a “You go, girl!” triumphalist denouement

TPF1138 · 06-24-2016, 11:53 AM

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Elizabeth Holmes (BAD BLOOD)

Spoilers&Speculation thread #1

“They basically tell the story of how Elizabeth Holmes created these fraudulent blood-testing machines, raised $9 billion through venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and refuses to admit they don’t work even when it is obvious the testing is inaccurate. They employ a big-time litigator and threaten to sue anyone who challenges her.”.” - A Studio Source

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▮Future Titles

The starship’s designers gave the ship a daily rhythm. But I miss other rhythms. There are no seasons. The sky never changes.

▮ Synopsis

Theranos is the blood-testing startup that Holmes founded in 2003, with claims it could test blood with only a pinprick instead of the traditional method of drawing blood by injection. That potential left Theranos with a $9 billion valuation as recently as two years ago. The company since has come under investigation over claims of inaccurate testing, and Holmes’ own worth — at one point valued at $4.5 billion for her 50% stake — has fallen to a fraction of that. The last valuation by Forbes placed the company’s net worth at $800 million.

▮ News

Jennifer Lawrence Boarding Adam McKay Theranos Medical Drama Project

Buyers Lining Up For Adam McKay-Jennifer Lawrence Pitch On Medical Company Theranos

‘Bad Blood’ Bids Mobilize for Jennifer Lawrence-Adam McKay Package: 9 Offers

Legendary Wins Jennifer Lawrence-Adam McKay ‘Bad Blood’ Auction

TPF1138 · 06-24-2016, 12:01 PM

Inside the Hollywood Frenzy Around Jennifer Lawrence’s Theranos Movie

Quote:

Legendary Pictures picked up the package, but only after outlasting plenty of other bidders—and ponying up a reported $3 million.

After a solid week of exceptionally fevered Hollywood wheeling and dealing, the movie project with Jennifer Lawrence attached to portray Elizabeth Holmes—founder of the embattled blood-testing company Theranos—and Adam McKay on board as writer-director has finally landed a buyer.

Legendary Pictures snapped up rights to the hot-button biopic for a reported $3 million Thursday evening, after outbidding and outlasting a swarm of competition from Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, STX Entertainment, Regency Enterprises, Cross Creek, Amazon Studios, AG Capital, the Weinstein Company, and, in the penultimate stretch, Paramount, among other studio suitors.

“The numbers are very reasonable,” says a source close to the deal who declined to be identified because the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “It was more about the quality of the package.”

Based on a book proposal by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley, the project (reported to be in the $40 million to $50 million budget range) has made the rounds to almost every studio in town. It’s been personally pitched by McKay, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for last year’s rollicking financial meltdown procedural The Big Short.

“They basically tell the story of how Elizabeth Holmes created these fraudulent blood-testing machines, raised $9 billion through venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and refuses to admit they don’t work even when it is obvious the testing is inaccurate,” says a studio source familiar with how the project was pitched. “They employ a big-time litigator and threaten to sue anyone who challenges her.”

A package deal stoking the ardor of so many major distributors simultaneously is about as rare as an albino mountain lion sighting in Runyon Canyon. But this deal had been a movie-industry darling since Deadline first broke news of McKay and Lawrence’s involvement on June 17.

“They are two pieces of talent that you want to be in business with,” said another executive at one of the companies bidding on the property who also requested anonymity. “They are both white hot. And there was a resonant pitch.”

Moreover, Bad Blood’s awards-season calculus is beyond reproach. Lawrence, the Academy Award-winning Most Bankable Female Star in the Universe™, playing America’s youngest self-made female billionaire in a boom-bust biopic would probably be enough to get the production green-lighted on her own. But add in McKay’s experience spinning investment esoterica like super-collateralized debt obligation into bankable mainstream entertainment (The Big Short made $133 million worldwide), and a macro-narrative illuminating Wall Street’s sweet tooth for showy Silicon Valley disruptors, and the project practically sells itself. “We dropped out because the deal got too crazy,” the first source explains.

Perhaps not as crazy as the real story of Theranos. Founded in 2003 by hematology head-turner Holmes—a Stanford dropout with a penchant for black turtlenecks and an abiding fear of hypodermic needles who was once hailed as the next Steve Jobs—the blood-testing start-up touted revolutionary technology aimed at detecting everything from cancer to high cholesterol with just a pinprick of blood. After reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in private funding and becoming a star in the Silicon Valley tech press, the Holmes-led Theranos saw its value shoot to $9 billion. Following scrutiny from Carreyrou at The Wall Street Journal and other outlets, Theranos issued tens of thousands of corrected blood tests. Then came the loss of a lucrative partnership with Walgreens, its valuation plunging to a relatively teensy $800 million, and Holmes going essentially broke.

Holmes, 32, now faces a ban that would prevent her from operating or owning a test lab for two years. But even as the class-action lawsuits pile up, Holmes insists Theranos’s technology actually works and is taking steps to correct the lab-testing issues the company says compromised test accuracy. Which is a long way of saying the proposed movie’s ending has yet to be written.

Call it Joy with a thoroughly dispiriting third act in place of a “You go, girl!” triumphalist denouement; American Hustle meets Silicon Valley at biotech junction. Either way, the project represents a rapid acceleration of ripped-from-the-headlines moviemaking; even Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, already in development when Osama bin Laden was killed in April of 2011, had 18 months to regroup before its December 2012 release.

This month’s Bad Blood bake-off is a peculiar case of life imitating art imitating life, providing a nifty parallel to the private-equity pile on that once made Theranos into Silicon Valley’s hotness du jour. Nearly every studio demonstrated themselves to be in a gigantic hurry to throw money at the project. Second-to-last bidder Paramount is McKay’s studio home, the distributor of his Anchorman movies and, more crucially, responsible for cultivating The Big Short into a modest box-office hit and awards contender.

Recently acquired for $3.5 billion by a Chinese conglomerate, however, Legendary had the deep pockets and new money momentum to make a sweeter deal. Sure, the company is more commonly associated with Comic-Con fare like The Dark Knight and Man of Steel—but it’s been making inroads into the exquisite bio-drama market with releases including Steve Jobs, Straight Outta Compton, and Unbroken.

Universal will distribute Bad Blood through its agreement with Legendary, even as Holmes herself keeps fighting to write her own happy Hollywood ending.

sunworshipper · 06-24-2016, 03:56 PM

I've heard of package deals before (writer/director/actors) but not with a novel author tie-in. How does that work--does McKay write the script with Carreyrou or based on his so-far unpublished novel? Or is a publishing house partnering with Legend--wait for it--dary on this?

Tati_SwanJones · 06-24-2016, 04:16 PM

wow its official!!

TFTNT

**Violent Delights** · 06-24-2016, 04:44 PM

thanks for starting, hopefully this one will go somewhere.

sunworshipper · 06-24-2016, 05:52 PM

World’s Most Loyal V.C. Says Theranos Critics Are Just Haters | Vanity Fair

Legendary Wins Massive Bidding War For Jennifer Lawrence/Adam McKay Movie ‘Bad Blood’'

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There’s no timeline on the movie yet — McKay still has to write the script, and Lawrence has Darren Aronofsky’s new movie (apparently titled “Mother”) and Francis Lawrence’s “Red Sparrow” to film this fall at least, so we wouldn’t expect to see this until the fall of 2018 at the earliest. And then hopefully we can get McKay to turn his eye to the financial collapse currently unfolding thanks to Brexit…

mlkj13 · 06-24-2016, 08:22 PM

Tftnt

Hope this one happens soon.

TPF1138 · 06-25-2016, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sunworshipper (View Post)

I've heard of package deals before (writer/director/actors) but not with a novel author tie-in. How does that work--does McKay write the script with Carreyrou or based on his so-far unpublished novel? Or is a publishing house partnering with Legend--wait for it--dary on this?

Both The Social Network and Steve Jobs worked similarly.

In both cases Aaron Sorkin wrote his screenplay based on both the book pitch, the author's research, and research he did himself, but the book and movie ended up being only vaguely related. The extent to which McKay and Carreyrou collaborate is likely to be up to them (and very much up to McKay). The book proposal might just have been a deal sweetener, to show studios there's solid reference material in play.

My guess is that Carreyrou will be a resource for McKay, but that McKay will have sole writing credit on the movie, and Carreyrou his book.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devil's Cry (View Post)

thanks for starting, hopefully this one will go somewhere.

There's significant reason to believe this will go somewhere Dave, and relatively quickly.

From Deadline:

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There is aggressive progress to production language, with McKay and Lawrence able to take the project elsewhere quickly, should it not go forward quickly.

That's a sure sign that this thing won't gestate for very long. In fact I'd suggest a shoot date will be announced within the next twelve to eighteen months...

**Violent Delights** · 06-25-2016, 02:41 PM

Well I've added it to the board guide, so now it has to.

TPF1138 · 06-25-2016, 05:37 PM

I wouldn't be surprised if they're rolling tape by the Spring of 2017 actually. Not saying they will be, just that I see it as a possibility...

sunworshipper · 06-25-2016, 07:04 PM

Just FYI, twelve months passed between when Adam McKay was signed to write and direct The Big Short and when he started shooting the film. And that was starting with a draft from a previous writer based upon an already published book. But they turned the film around very fast--it was released less than nine months after shooting started. So the lesson might be derived that McKay writes slow but edits fast.

TPF1138 · 06-26-2016, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sunworshipper (View Post)

... the lesson might be derived that McKay writes slow but edits fast.

It might indeed.

**J-LawForever** · 06-26-2016, 10:29 AM

I see a thread has been started. Good job all.

But yes. I see this coming around very soon.

Tati_SwanJones · 06-26-2016, 03:07 PM

so basically this woman is a big fat liar??

**Violent Delights** · 06-26-2016, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HutchLaw_Girl (View Post)

so basically this woman is a big fat liar??

The End.

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Fan Forum > Female Celebrities > Jennifer Lawrence > Elizabeth Holmes (BAD BLOOD) #1: Call it Joy with a thoroughly dispiriting third act in place of a “You go, girl!” triumphalist denouement