Jennifer Lawrence to Play Elizabeth Holmes in Movie about Theranos | Hacker News Reader

Jennifer Lawrence to Play Elizabeth Holmes in Movie about Theranos

theguardian.com

87 pointsrock5769 comments

We don't even know how the story ends! How can you write a movie script on this? I guess they want a trilogy?

It depends what you consider the end, in the movie "social network" they managed to make an awesome movie with a young facebook.

Nobody will watch part three, even though it is split into two movies, so the ending won't matter.

This is so true.

> We don't even know how the story ends!

I think Game of Thrones has shown that isn't a problem.

As long as Martin is still alive Game of Thrones will get an ending.

It's pretty clear Martin will die before he ends GoT

wow spoilers

When has accuracy ever been required in the pursuit of money?

Oh that's easy with a character piece, you start out at a low point (eg walking in to find FDA inspectors turning the place over) flash back to story of the meteoric rise during which you get to know the character (but not too well) and then end at a crossroads so the audience leaves speculating about what she would do and what they'd do if it were them.

It's a perfect role for Jennifer Lawrence since she can subvert her own stereotype. The woman's a genius.

Pity that the title "There will be blood" has already been used for a 2007 movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/

And "Pinprick" as well: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210355/

Seems crass to do this so soon. I don't know what the reasoning is behind this and I hope they change their minds.

Theyre trying to extract the last ounce of value out of the name.

Money. Hollywood is running out of ideas and they've rebooted/re-imagined/re-released/sequelized/etc everything.

So while we are debating whether to watch ghostbusters or independence day ( and whether our choices make us sexist or not), they'll be busy with this silly movie/non-story.

It's amazing how the media took a non-story and made it into a story and now they are going to make a movie out of a non-story they turned into a story.

This is akin to a firefighter arsonist setting fires all over town so that he can have more work or a greedy doctor intentionally giving his patients poison so that he'll be able to drum up more business.

It's circular and incestuous and wrong on so many levels. Like a snake swallowing its own tail.

When Hollywood trots out an endless procession of superhero sequels dumbed down for a global audience you can complain about greed and lament that they've run out of ideas.

When Hollywood mythologizes a real story that has captured the public imagination and is emblematic of our era, it's Hollywood at it's finest. It's Hollywood doing exactly what it ought to be doing but rarely does.

> When Hollywood mythologizes a real story that has captured the public imagination and is emblematic of our era, it's Hollywood at it's finest. It's Hollywood doing exactly what it ought to be doing but rarely does.

The problem is that Hollywood sometimes "mythologizes" a real story in the vernacular, non-academic sense of the quoted term: It adopts a false narrative, often in the form of a conspiracy theory, which then gets embedded in our collective cultural memory for a long time. (Examples: Amadeus; Zero Dark Thirty; Oliver Stone's JFK [0].)

Another version is when Hollywood creates a false narrative, or sub-narratives, in the name of "making a catchier story line" and with the excuse of "artistic license," which unjustly damage the reputations of real people. (Examples: Spotlight and All the President's Men. [1] [2].)

[0] http://www.livescience.com/27364-oscars-innacurate-historica...

[1] http://news.wgbh.org/post/how-hollywood-distorts-reality-spo...

[2] http://www.mhsmantra.com/2014/04/06/history-vs-hollywood-mir...

I don't have a problem with that. A generation from now we'll have the Theranos movie, and no one will be too uptight about the specifics of what happened- that's a job for journalists and historians, they're a different breed of storyteller than what you conventionally find in Hollywood, with different goals. It's more important to get the tone right than the details.

I mean, the biggest movie made about the vietnam war was 'Apocalypse Now'. It was made up. None of that actually happened, but it set the tone for how the war is remembered for millions who were never actually there. As factual accounts get passed through the generations they become myths, and myths are what they are because they're worth remembering.

And with regards to Holmes reputation, well, from where she's at now, there's nowhere to go but up. As for all her investors: they deserve what they've got coming.

> A generation from now we'll have the Theranos movie, and no one will be too uptight about the specifics of what happened .... It's more important to get the tone right than the details.

That strikes me as a very Stalinist take on things. I would paraphrase it as the movie director's saying: It doesn't matter how many actual, real, flesh-and-blood people I hurt; what matters is that I advance what I imagine to be the greater long-term good. (Or, classically: The ends justify the means.)

Not for me, thanks.

> As for all her investors: they deserve what they've got coming.

Why is that?

> with regards to Holmes reputation, well, from where she's at now, there's nowhere to go but up

It's not impossible to imagine a telling of this story that's actually sympathetic to Holmes: a very smart young woman has an idea, the idea leads to a ton of money and hype being dropped on her head, and by the time she realizes the idea won't work she's been strapped into a rocket that's going to launch regardless. A story of being trapped inside a prison of one's own creation.

(I'm not saying this angle necessarily fits the facts, but movies are stories first, and this would be one way to turn Theranos into an audience-engaging story.)

Hollywood didn't do that to Amadeus; Peter Shaffer did. It was a very successful play (and even further from a historical document) before it became a period movie.

JFK is another odd example; the movie was notorious as a departure from the historical record, and cemented Stone's reputation as a conspiracy enthusiast. Very shortly after the film was released, that reputation became part of the marketing for the movie!

The reasoning, is that it's fresh in the media and minds of media consumers. In a year or two most of the public that happened to hear about Theranos - almost exclusively due to the scandal - will entirely have forgotten that it ever existed in the first place. Consumer memory for this sort of thing is extremely short, unless you're talking Enron scale events (which Theranos is not, financially it's a disaster the scale of Webvan).

> so soon. I don't know what the reasoning is behind

Because "Silicon Valley" demonstrated the value to be had in a tight loop between the Valley and Hollywood. In vivo. In vitro. In silica. In gelatin?

How is it crass? Are we supposed to have a period of mourning for the fraud that Holmes unleashed on the world with potentially life threatening implications?

I assume he finds it crass because the story has not finished unfolding and it's too early to completely condemn the company.

The article ends with "fall from grace of cinematic proportions" but honestly, what a dull topic. A bunch of people building some equipment, filing (or failing to file) paperwork, a few business deals without due diligence and Henry Kissinger.

Unless they add some guns and car chases (not joking here, just hyperbole) it's hard to see how they could make any more than a 90-minute snoozefest. Dramatic music won't be enough.

The same can be said for "The Social Network". Granted, Facebook and Zuckerberk are for more mainstream than Theranos.

Theranos is probably more mainstream now than Zuck (not Facebook) was in 2010

Well, great stories happen to those who can tell them; I'm sure there's interesting POV to be explored if they dig deep. That said, considering the average Hollywood film, I wouldn't bet on it.

There's a few films that deal with vaguely similar themes:

Rogue Trader: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131566/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_54

Cheaters: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218094/

Shattered Glass: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323944/?ref_=nv_sr_1

These are just 3 off the top of my head. There are probably other better films.

Would be nice to binge watch this one right after Joy. You'd get something of a corporate version of Scarface.

I've always found it odd how the media puts so much emphasis on the founder prior to success or public release of the actual product. I can't help but think if Holmes were a different demographic (i.e. an Asian or Black man), they wouldn't be making a movie about this.

Well, the entire point of this story is how unwarranted hype can cause disaster, which seems like you should like it then? I'm not exactly sure what point you're making with the minority mentions though. Do you mean there would not have been the disaster-inducing hype in the first place if the founder wasn't a well-connected white person?

Maybe, though she's already not the stereotypical rich white young male founder. She does check 2/3...

I still think the story of the rather epic rise and fall of a company that promised so much, achieved an insanely high valuation, then turned out to be essentially a fraud makes for a pretty good plot. I'm guessing if someone were to make the movie at all, the ethnicity or gender of the founder wouldn't really overshadow the sheer weirdness of the story.

You find it odd that the media would focus so much on the person who has had the most singular and direct influence over a controversial company's decisionmaking?

As an Asian, yeah, sure, I'll definitely agree that Asians don't get much media/movie treatment. Not sure I see your point. Who do you want the media to focus on in the Theranos case?

I think the op is saying they wouldn't be interested in the story at all if it wasn't a white woman protagonist.

Perhaps if Holmes weren't a photogeneic young white woman, she wouldn't have received the same attention from VC and immensely influential U.S. political players, which would also reduce the amount of media attention she ultimately got. Hard to separate the variables from this equation.

Gender likely didn't help with VC/political players -- that was primarily family connections from Holmes dad. The media hype probably got a boost from gender.

"Blood in the Water"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d42uIBcjviU

In a few decades it will be discovered that the whole Theranos debacle was simply a setup sell Movies and Books. Would be the most awesome setup ever!

Given how much movies often cost it seems like you could indeed fund a really really really dysfunctional team to build a very bad idea as a startup, watch the fireworks, and make a movie from it.

That's basically the 'movie in a movie' genre - usually comedies but not always.

Too soon

Indeed. It seems like we're waiting less and less time between a news story and a movie about it. I suspect if we waited longer, the tone of the movies would be different, with the additional perspective of anything that has yet to be announced or go public.

I thought this was what The Daily Show pioneered. When reality and current news is a farce, why let it age?

Agreed. This play has not been played out yet...

Why do you say that? While we may not know the ultimate fate of the Edison machines or the company, there is already a compelling story that can be told, one that most are unaware of the details.

Doing it soon when the company is still in natural news cycles helps build interest for the movie. My only worry with something so soon is real world repercussions if Hollywood decides to play too fast and loose with the facts.

It has been a well established medical fact that the blood from a pinpick does not provide a representative blood sample for most medical tests, yet you are worried about Hollywood playing too fast and loose with the facts? Maybe you should be more worried about Silicon Valley selling the hype and ripping off investors.

People who believe in science fiction should be working in Hollywood, not Silicon Valley. The problem is they make more money in SV.

I really wonder what JLaw's interpretation of Holmes's baritone voice would sound like.

I suppose the company shall receive compensation for this? What about mrs. Holmes, does she get any royalties ?

Just FYI, i quoted the titles "Blood Diamonds", "The vials of Wrath" and "The return of the Needles" first, so i expect royalties!

Do we know how they will portray this? Is this going to be the story of start up that didn't execute properly or be a story about how women struggle in the tech industry? I really don't expect J.L. to play someone who loses

Glad I saw this on HN, I saw the news that Jlaw was playing Holmes elsewhere and I just assumed they were doing a gender swap on Sherlock as well and thought it was odd, but figured I'd still see it.

Title: "The Big Bluff"

This is satire right?

Given today isn't April 1, I'd safely say no. Although this would've made great material for that day :-)

Wtf

Looks like Hollywood is finally taking their cue from Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10544788

Hopefully they also end up naming it Unicorn Blood.

Wow it's nice to feel validated.

If this ends up becoming real Adam McKay is reading this I'm open to consult :)

Unicorn Blood is an amazing title.

I hope John Woo directs it, so we could have a few slo-mo moments with Doves flying overhead while a greorian chant plays in the background (that's just the opening).

with the camera coming close-up to a one of the hooded monks of the choir and his face is the face of Kissinger smiling Darth Sidious style...

With a close up shot of a single drop of blood from a pricked finger falling onto a glass collector thingie (99% sure that's the medical term for it.)

"bullet time" style where the drop starts (and you can see an out of focus Holmes in the background turning to look over her shoulder as an FDA inspector arrives with a bunch of FBI agents and a search warrant, then the blood drop freezes mid drop, the entire scene rotates around and now you can see the face of a young Holmes in a Stanford laboratory class watching the drop hit the "glass collector thingie". Pull back to a wide shot and start from the beginning of her journey.

and delicious too!

It would be great if they case a Muslim woman to play Holmes.

I briefly misread this as Theano. Finally, a movie about multidimensional matrix evaluation!

Are you fucking kidding me? To me this just further confirms that none of this has anything to do with science and health. It's all about $$$. I am not talking about Elizabeth Holmes either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com