Bad Blood, the project from writer/director Adam McKay which looks at the rise and fall of the medical technology company Theranos with Jennifer Lawrence attached to star, has been picked up for distribution by Apple Original Films.
The project has been percolating since 2016 when McKay and Lawrence first took it out to auction. After some heated bidding, Bad Blood landed at Legendary. Apple will be co-producing the film, with the deal coming together over the past several months.
Lawrence is attached to star as Elizabeth Holmes, the 19-year-old founder of the controversial blood-test company Theranos. Theranos is the startup that made a splash in 2003 when Holmes claimed it had a blood testing method that would require only a small pinprick instead of a much larger full blood draw by injection and yield results for dozens of different tests. An excited Wall Street began throwing money at the company, leaving it with a valuation of $9 billion in 2014. However, investigations into the accuracy of the company’s claims – or rather, inaccuracy – led to the company’s collapse.
The film is based on the book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start Up by former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou, who was the one who first broke the story of the company’s attempts to hide their failures from their investors.
Holmes is currently in the third week of her trial over accusations of fraud in regards to her time running Theranos.
Director Alex Gibney has already told the Theranos story in 2019’s The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. It should be interested to see what McKay, known for mixing comedy and social issues in his films like The Big Short and Vice, will do with this.
