An old Tumblr meme and fake movie pitch will now become a star-studded Netflix movie

An award-winning creative team has come together with streaming giant Netflix to make a deal for a film based on just one image, 24 words and a viral idea that stormed through social media.

In 2014, Grammy-winning singer Rihanna and Oscar-nominated actor Lupita Nyong’o were sitting next to each other at a Miu Miu fashion show, according to The Guardian. That’s when someone on the social media site Tumblr suggested that the picture looked like it was straight out of a movie “with Rihanna as the tough-as-nails leader/master thief and Lupita as the genius computer hacker.”

The idea proved to be popular, garnering 488,246 “notes” on the site and generating thousands of likes and retweets when it appeared on Twitter. Even Nyong’o and Rihanna got in on the fun.

And that, it seemed, was that. Until Entertainment Weekly revealed a month later that Netflix had signed a deal to produce and distribute the film, beating out other suitors with an aggressive bid at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay is slated to direct, and Golden Globe-nominated actor and writer Issa Rae will write the screenplay.

It is not clear if Rae will use the exact plot suggested by Tumblr and Twitter users, but they will receive credit in some form, Rae’s team told Vanity Fair.

As Vox has noted, this is not the first time a viral internet sensation has led to Hollywood productions: Grumpy Cat has her own movie, “$#*! My Dad Says” became a TV show and “Deadpool” finally began production after test footage leaked onto YouTube.

Social media users were extremely excited about the announcement, not the least because it will feature a creative team comprised entirely of black women.

This is, however, not the only heist film featuring all women that Rihanna is in. The Barbados singer is also slated to star in “Ocean’s 8,” a spinoff of the popular “Ocean’s Eleven” series about crews pulling off criminal capers.

This story was originally published May 24, 2017 at 5:47 PM with the headline "An old Tumblr meme and fake movie pitch will now become a star-studded Netflix movie."