Theranos Film Inches Along In Development; Gets Preliminary Title

Since last I wrote about a possible film about the medical device/testing company Theranos, a studio has successfully bid on the project.  Legendary Studios won an auction on the film rights, beating out 9 other offers on the project, which has Jennifer Lawrence attached to star as Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes.  Adam McKay would write the script and direct the project, duplicating his roles on the Oscar-nominated film The Big Short.  The film now has a preliminary title of Bad Blood.  It is certainly too early to tell if the Taylor Swift song of the same name will be used in the movie.

While getting a studio offer is important to the film getting produced, what is perhaps as interesting to our readers is that a book is connected to the film deal.  Two-time Pulitzer-prize winning writer John Carreyrou, who has written extensively on Theranos in The Wall Street Journal, will be writing a book that (presumably) serves as the basis for the script.  This follows the development arc for The Big Short, for which McKay shares an Adapted Screenplay Oscar (in addition to his nomination for directing the film).  The Big Short was adapted from the nonfiction book of the same name by Michael Lewis, though that book was not written with a film adaptation in mind.

Again, this is very early in the process of making a film.  McKay seems very interested in trying to repeat his success with The Big Short, and I suspect the major unknown in whether this film gets made (and when) has to do with its inspiration.  The Theranos story has not yet been told.  Perhaps McKay will decide to have a more generic focus in his film on tech companies that fail to deliver on their promises, but at the moment I think the story is too linked with Theranos to move forward without some resolution in real life.