Twit­ter wills a Lupi­ta Nyong’o‑Rihanna heist movie into existence

It’s not often that Twit­ter is hailed as a breed­ing ground for great ideas, but some­times, events like this remind us of the awe­some pow­er of social media. Yes, a movie star­ring Rihan­na and Lupi­ta Nyong’o as a pair of bad-girl scam­mers is actu­al­ly com­ing to life.

The Gram­my-win­ning singer and Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed actor were pho­tographed sit­ting side by side at a Miu Miu fash­ion show in 2014, and the pho­to went on to inspire the joke film pitch.

“Rihan­na looks like she scams rich white men and Lupi­ta is the com­put­er smart best friend that helps plan the scams,” read the tweet, which received over 96,000 retweets. Both stars then expressed their inter­est in the project via social media, Nyong’o tweet­ing ​“I’m down if you are @rihanna” and Rihan­na reply­ing, ​“I’m in Pit’z.”

A cam­paign then began for Issa Rae, cre­ator of HBO’s Inse­cure, and Ava DuVer­nay, the film­mak­er behind Sel­ma and 13^th, to team up as the film’s writer and direc­tor respectively.

The project’s buzz has since inten­si­fied, with fans even going as far as imag­in­ing con­cept art and wardrobe ideas. As of yet, it’s unclear how faith­ful Rae will remain to the orig­i­nal pitch, but her reps have con­firmed that, ​“the orig­i­nal Twit­ter users who imag­ined the con­cept for this film will be cred­it­ed and includ­ed in some form.”

At this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, Net­flix is report­ed to have beat sev­er­al com­peti­tors in a bid­ding war, win­ning the chance to back and dis­trib­ute the film. Rae is already rumoured to be work­ing on the script and the stu­dio is look­ing at a pro­duc­tion start of 2018, once DuVer­nay has wrapped film­ing on her cur­rent project.

We don’t know about you, but the prospect of four supreme­ly tal­ent­ed women team­ing up for a crowd­sourced heist movie is pret­ty much every­thing we’ve ever dreamed of. If you’re as excit­ed about this project as we are, let us know by tweet­ing @LWLies