Amanda Seyfried replaces Kate McKinnon as disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu's series, The Dropout. McKinnon had been attached to Hulu's Theranos series as both its star and executive producer since the streamer announced its straight-to-series order in April 2019. However, in February, Kate McKinnon exited The Dropout.
Hulu's The Dropout is based on the popular ABC News podcast of the same name and tells the unbelievable rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest ever female billionaire. Holmes was considered a prodigy early on and had significant promise when she began attending Standford University. But instead of following through with the Ivy League curriculum, the 19-year-old chemical engineer ended up dropping out of college and set her sights on Silicon Valley. There, she launched Theranos, a tech company that projected big goals of disrupting the healthcare industry by offering a breakthrough rapid blood test technology that required minimal amounts of blood for the process to work. She was young, ambitious, and drew many comparisons to Steve Jobs.
When Kate McKinnon left The Dropout, Hulu began the hunt for a new star to lead its exploration of the Theranos story. According to Deadline, Amanda Seyfried, who is still riding the Oscar buzz surrounding her performance as Marion Davies in David Fincher's Mank, has been tapped by the streamer to step into the role of Elizabeth Holmes. The Dropout will go into production this summer.
According to TV Line, Theranos was "valued at $9-billion in 2015." Soon after, the world learned that its groundbreaking technology was a complete fraud. A few years later, the burgeoning tech company and its wunderkind CEO Elizabeth Holmes were bankrupt. In 2018, the nonfiction bestseller "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley" hit shelves. John Carreyrou, the journalist who documented the Theranos fiasco in the book, received national acclaim and won the 2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
The Theranos story is just the latest in a string of tales exploring the trend of fraudulent tech moguls gaming the system. From the Fyre Festival documentary, Fyre Fraud, which hit Hulu in 2019 and followed the fake-it-til-you-make-it journey of festival organizer Billy McFarland to the streamer's most recent doc, WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, which shines a light on the crazy story behind the defamed communal workspace company and its former megalomaniacal CEO, Adam Neumann, audiences have maintained a strong interest in this type of entertainment. And hopefully, with Seyfriend on board, The Dropout will be another win for Hulu.
Source: Deadline
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