Culture March 29, 2021

Amanda Seyfried to play disgraced tech CEO Elizabeth Holmes in 'The Dropout'

WATCH: 'The Dropout': The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos

Amanda Seyfried will now play disgraced tech CEO Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu limited series "The Dropout."

Based on an ABC News podcast of the same name, the project initially had "Saturday Night Live" star Kate McKinnon playing the controversial figure as well as co-producing. She left the project in February.

MORE: 'The Dropout': The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos

Seyfried, fresh off her Oscar nomination for her work in David Fincher's "Mank," will also now produce the limited series, ABC News has confirmed.

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Amanda Seyfried attends the premiere of 20th Century Fox's "The Art of Racing in the Rain," Aug. 1, 2019, in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Holmes attends the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit cocktail party, Oct. 6, 2015, in San Francisco.

Executive producers include Elizabeth Meriwether, Liz Heldens, Liz Hannah, Katherine Pope, Rebecca Jarvis, Victoria Thompson and Taylor Dunn.

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Holmes dropped out of Stanford University in 2004 and founded the high-tech health company Theranos. Modeling herself in the image of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Holmes raised billions of dollars and attracted headlines worldwide based on false claims her company's technology could test for a spectrum of diseases with just a few drops of blood.

Whistleblowers, however, soon exposed that the gadget never worked, endangering those who relied on its results in lieu of more traditional scans for cancer and other diseases.

The massive scam made Holmes a billionaire, but she was ultimately indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.