Television series
The Dropout
The Dropout tracks Elizabeth Holmes from earnest Stanford dropout to disgraced founder of a health-tech unicorn built on a lie, staying eerily sympathetic even as the fraud metastasizes. Amanda Seyfried's performance is the show's spine — mimicry curdling into pathology. It's a slow-burn character study more than a thriller, for anyone fascinated by self-belief hardening into delusion.
If you liked this
Inventing Anna2022
Julia Garner channels a different but equally magnetic con artist in Anna Delvey, another fabulist who talked her way into elite society on pure nerve and a fake accent.
But The show indulges its subject's glamour a little too lovingly, and the framing device drags in places.

WeCrashed2022
Jared Leto's Adam Neumann is Theranos's spiritual cousin — another founder whose cult of personality outran the actual business, this time with yoga mats instead of blood vials.
But It's broader and more soapy than The Dropout, less interested in nuance than in spectacle.

Super Pumped2022
Same true-crime-adjacent Silicon Valley machine, turning the founder myth inside out with a swaggering, self-destructive Travis Kalanick at the wheel.
But The testosterone-fuelled bro culture can feel exhausting rather than illuminating after a few episodes.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
A Face in the Crowd1957
Both are studies of a magnetic performer whose public self is a lie the audience wants to believe — Holmes's Steve Jobs cosplay is Lonesome Rhodes's folksiness with a lab coat.
Andy Griffith is terrifying as a folksy drifter turned media messiah, and Kazan's film predicted, six decades early, exactly how charisma curdles into control once an audience starts believing the performance.
But It's black-and-white, stagey by modern standards, and its television-age politics can feel like a history lesson.

More like this (8)
Dopesick2021
Swap blood-testing devices for painkillers and you get the same story — a company selling a miracle that quietly kills people, and the regulators who looked away.
But It's heavier and angrier than The Dropout, with real grief on screen instead of dark comedy.

The Social Network2010
David Fincher's origin story for another unlikely wunderkind who reshaped the world through sheer will, ego, and a willingness to blur the truth about how it happened.
But It's more interested in betrayal between men than in the fraud itself, so the parallels are mood more than plot.

Catch Me If You Can2002
Spielberg's classic take on a young con man who improvises his way into wealth and invented credentials — Holmes with more charm and less blood on her hands.
But It's a much lighter, more romantic film, closer to a caper than a cautionary tale.

The Big Short2015
A furious, funny explainer on how an entire industry convinced itself a lie was true, with the same appetite for turning finance and fraud into gripping drama.
But The fourth-wall-breaking style is an acquired taste, and it's about systems more than a single charismatic villain.

Painkiller2023
Purdue Pharma gets the dramatized-true-story treatment, tracing corporate self-delusion and denial with the same close attention to the people who enabled it.
But It's blunter and less psychologically curious about its central figures than The Dropout is about Holmes.

The Loudest Voice2019
Russell Crowe's Roger Ailes offers another portrait of an empire built on charisma, control, and denial, crumbling once the people inside it stop believing the myth.
But It's a nastier, more claustrophobic watch, with less of The Dropout's dark comic energy.

The Bleeding Edge2018no page yet
It's the real-world version of Theranos's stakes: an industry built on trust and regulatory shortcuts, and the ordinary people whose bodies pay the price when that trust is misplaced.
This calm, devastating documentary shows what happens when medical devices fail real patients, no drama-school gloss required — the human cost Theranos's blood tests never got the chance to inflict at scale.
But It's sober and clinical rather than entertaining, with none of the dark comedy or star wattage that makes The Dropout watchable.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels1988no page yet
Same confidence-trick architecture — invent a persona, read the mark, commit completely — just stripped of victims and consequences, so the mechanics become pure pleasure to watch.
A gleeful comic con-artist duel that treats deception as an art form rather than a tragedy — a reminder the same impulses driving Holmes can just as easily be played for delighted laughter.
But It's frothy and cynicism-free, with none of the real-world stakes or consequences that make The Dropout land so hard.
People
Cast
Writing
- Elizabeth MeriwetherCreator
- Sofya Levitsky-WeitzStory Editor
- Wei-Ning YuStory Editor
Production
- Allan TranAssociate Producer
- Zachary PanozzoAssociate Producer
- Hilton SmithCo-Executive Producer
- Donna NittiCo-Producer
- Matt LutskyConsulting Producer
- Elizabeth MeriwetherExecutive Producer
- Jordana MollickExecutive Producer
- Katherine PopeExecutive Producer
- Liz HannahExecutive Producer
- Liz HeldensExecutive Producer
- Michael ShowalterExecutive Producer
- Rebecca JarvisExecutive Producer
- Taylor DunnExecutive Producer
- Victoria ThompsonExecutive Producer
- Amanda SeyfriedProducer
- Hilary BettisProducer
- Jason RamosProducer
- Megan MascenaProducer
- Dan LeFrancSupervising Producer
Recommended by
Inventing Anna, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, WeCrashed, Super Pumped, Quiz