Netflix already gearing up to give The Tinder Swindler the doc-to-drama treatment
Felicity Morris' documentary about women who were scammed by an online hook-up is already climbing the Netflix charts
Just two days after its release, it’s starting to look like Netflix’s new documentary The Tinder Swindler might already be primed to be The Next Big Streaming Thing That Colonizes Our Collective Brains. Felicity Morris’ look into the lives of multiple women all scammed by the same dating app hook-up has lots to offer the intrigue-starved masses: Sex. Danger. Revenge. A name that is nearly impossible to say without sounding like a total dweeb. It’s already cracking the service’s streaming charts in the U.S. and U.K., obviously.
But, of course, it’s no longer sufficient for a documentary to simply be a success these days: It must also be a launching pad to the multimedia stars! Hence Variety reporting this afternoon that Netflix has already started the machines revving up to potentially transform Morris’ film into a dramatized movie, in which we pray to god lots of professional actors are forced to say “The Tinder Swindler’s out there!” with completely straight faces, maybe multiple times per scene.
Specifically, the company is in early talks with Tinder Swindler producer Raw TV (the company also responsible for Three Identical Strangers and Morris’ Don’t F**k With Cats) about dramatizing the story of Shimon Hayut and the various Scandinavian women he’s accused of convincing he was the son of an Israeli diamond tycoon.
Variety notes that conversations on the potential project are still early enough that all involved are trying to hammer out what the tone would be, and what it would look like—which is silly, because what it’ll “look like” is more Tinder Swindles for people to shove into their eyeballs.
This whole documentary-to-drama-project pipeline has been a growing phenomenon of late, with projects like Peacock’s upcoming Joe Vs. Carole (based on the same events as Netflix’s own Tiger King), and HBO Max’s upcoming dramatization of The Staircase (with Colin Firth as Michael Peterson) reminding us that the only thing better than a story told once, with real people, is a story told a second time with far more famous people in a series of elaborate wigs.