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A Rihanna and Lupita Nyong’o Movie Would Be the Best Thing Twitter Has Ever Done

A viral tweet might have inspired a movie starring the singer and the Oscar winner—and they both love the concept.
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By Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.

Twitter has given birth to some truly awful things—but it will all be worthwhile if a Lupita Nyong’oRihanna movie rises from this ashen wasteland. An extremely strong photo of the two stars sitting in the front row at a Miu Miu fashion show in 2014 recently sent Twitter into a tizzy, inspiring users to demand that Nyong’o and Rihanna star in a film together. Eventually, the performers themselves got in on the fun as well, pitching a potential movie to a theoretical behind-the-scenes dream team of writer (and HBO star) Issa Rae and director Ava DuVernay.

The journey began last Tuesday, when a Twitterer with the username 1800SADGAL quote-tweeted a photo of the pair at the Miu Miu show, with this lively caption: “Rihanna looks like she scams rich white men and lupita is the computer smart best friend that helps plan the scans.”

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The tweet went viral, quickly inspiring fan fiction. Still, a tweet’s just a tweet, right? It’s silly to give the concept of a movie any more thought—or it was, until Nyong’o spotted the tweet and loved it so much that she roped in Rihanna.

“I'm down if you are,” the Black Panther star tweeted the Grammy winner on Thursday.

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Rihanna then quote-tweeted the tweet with a message of her own: “I’m in Pit’z.”

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(A fun game to play: imagine the quirky nickname Rihanna would give you.)

More Twitter users then chimed in, quickly setting about to determine who would handle the film behind the scenes. Naturally, they settled on director Ava DuVernay and HBO multi-hyphenate Issa Rae to pen the script. Sadly, neither of them saw the tweets, killing the fan fiction as swiftly as it was born.

Just kidding! They both responded promptly, Rae with a GIF of a cat excitedly smashing a keyboard and DuVernay with: “Lights set. Camera’s up. Ready to call action for these #queens.”

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Rihanna replied to Rae’s tweet with “Issa possibility” and a nervous-looking emoji, while Nyong’o posted a series of fan-fiction drawings of the fake movie on Instagram. A million hearts exploded online.

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Fans then got even more involved, creating fake scenes and dialogue to go along with the dream movie.

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Then, more behind-the-scenes people got involved. Oscar-nominated producer Helen Estabrook (Whiplash, Young Adult) offered her services. Codeblack, a division of Lionsgate, took things a step further—perhaps too far for our soft, palpitating hearts.

“Lionsgate is ready!” Codeblack’s official account tweeted. “Are you guys serious? If so a deal can be done this week!”

Vanity Fair has reached out to Rihanna, Nyong’o, and Lionsgate for confirmation that this is real and not just a giant marketing ploy to break a million hearts. In a statement to V.F., Rae confirmed that she’s ready when they are.

“Oh I’m definitely going to shoot my shot,” she says in a statement. “This is an amazing opportunity and all credit to Black Twitter.”

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Fun fact: though you can’t tell from the viral version of the photo, Margot Robbie and Elizabeth Olsen were actually sitting on either side of Nyong’o and Rihanna at that now-fabled fashion show. But if you were at the 2014 Miu Miu show and nobody wrote fan fiction about you, were you ever really there?

Both Rihanna and Nyong’o seem as if they’re actually ready to make this Twitter-born movie a reality. Even more perfect, their most recent projects are the ideal preparation for it: the singer, who’s been slowly racking up acting roles over the years, is starring in the upcoming reboot Ocean’s Eight, playing some sort of hacker/scammer/high-class thief. Nyong’o is shooting Black Panther, and while the film is still under wraps, recently revealed footage shows her character dancing and “taking out several armed guards.” Clearly, everything they’ve done in their lives so far has been leading them to this moment. If the movie does get made, it will absolutely be the best thing Twitter has ever done.