Meme becomes reality as Netflix orders Lupita Nyong’o and Rihanna’s con artist movie
Here’s some surprising news for 2017: It turns out that good things actually can happen, but only if everybody involved is really cool and talented. Today’s good thing is that Netflix has actually picked up some kind of con artist movie starring Rihanna and Lupita Nyong’o, with Selma’s Ava DuVernay directing and Insecure’s Issa Rae writing. If you’re not sure why that’s so exciting, it all goes back to a viral tweet from earlier this year about a photo of Rihanna and Nyong’o sitting next to each other at a fashion show in 2014:
From there, Twitter users basically dreamed up an entire movie about Rihanna and Nyong’o conning rich white men, with people suggesting that DuVernay should direct and Rae should write. As it turns out, they were all on board with the idea:
In the month since then, everything has moved ridiculously fast. According to Entertainment Weekly, Rae is already working on the script and DuVernay is planning to direct the film in 2018 after she finishes with A Wrinkle In Time. Netflix also reportedly won the rights to the untitled project “in a very aggressive bid,” so either Twitter buzz for an imaginary movie is very valuable, or real movie studios are as excited about this as people on social media are.