Theranos movie based on ‘Bad Blood’ book to star Jennifer Lawrence

The downfall of the healthcare company Theranos is chronicled in a newly published book, which is set to be turned into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence.

The book, written by The Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou, explained how and why Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes released what she claimed to be a revolutionary blood testing product that did not work.

The movie based on Carreyrou’s book will be produced by Legendary, the studio behind such films as “Interstellar,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “300” and “The Hangover.”

Legendary won a bidding war for the film, which will reportedly be written and directed by Adam McKay, who directed “The Big Short.” Actor Will Ferrell and Lawrence have signed on to the project as producers, according to Variety.

Lawrence is expected to play Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford and founded the company in 2003, when she was 19 years old.

Holmes and Theranos have been charged with raising more than $700 million from investors through a fraudulent scheme that took place over the course of years. They allegedly made misleading statements about the company’s portable blood analyzer, which is a machine that can test and process small samples of blood.

While Theranos touted the technology as revolutionary, the blood analyzer had only been successfully tested a few times, the Securities and Exchange Commission concluded.

The company allegedly claimed that the product was used by the Defense Department on the battlefield in Afghanistan, generating $100 million in revenue for the company in 2014. The SEC found that the government did not use Theranos’ technology and that revenue in 2014 barely surpassed $100,000.

After the SEC charged her and the company with fraud earlier this year, Holmes was stripped of control and is barred from serving as an officer or director at any public company for the next decade.