The story of Elizabeth Holmes and the $9 billion hoax known as her company Theranos is coming to Hulu. Emmy winner Kate McKinnon is set to portray Holmes in a limited series based on ABC News/ABC Radio podcast “The Dropout.” The “SNL” star will also executive produce the project alongside “Dropout” host/creator Rebecca Jarvis. Deadline broke the news.
Hulu handed out a series order to the project, also titled “The Dropout.” Podcast producers Victoria Thompson and Taylor Dunn are producing.
“The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong,” “The Dropout” podcast’s description teases. “How did the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire lose it all in the blink of an eye?” it asks. “How did the woman once heralded as ‘the next Steve Jobs’ find herself facing criminal charges — to which she pleaded not guilty — and up to 20 years in jail? How did her technology, meant to revolutionize healthcare, potentially put millions of patients at risk? And how did so many smart people get it so wrong along the way?”
At age 19, Holmes left Stanford to start Theranos. She created a “lab in a box” in order to make blood tests more affordable and accessible and less painful and disruptive. Called the Edison, the box purportedly only required one drop of blood. But the Edison’s technology didn’t work, and Holmes repeatedly lied about the tests’ accuracy and managed to raise $400 million in investments with false claims. Last year Holmes and former Theranos chief operating officer Sunny Balwani were indicted on “nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers,” the source details.
Holmes and Theranos’ fake medical revolution are documented in Alex Gibney’s “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.” The doc aired on HBO last month. Jennifer Lawrence is attached to star as Holmes in “Bad Blood,” based on John Carreyrou’s exposé “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley.” Oscar-nominated “Shape of Water” screenwriter Vanessa Taylor will pen the script.
McKinnon has received five consecutive Emmy nominations for her work on “SNL” and won twice. Her recent projects include espionage comedy “The Spy Who Dumped Me” and children’s series “The Magic School Bus Rides Again.” She has several movies premiering this year: juggalo comedy “Family” (April 19), Beatles-inspired fantasy “Yesterday” (June 28), and an untitled drama about the women who fought back against Fox News’ culture of sexual harassment (December 20).
