News

Exclusive: Netflix is returning to the wellspring of stories in which social media events bleed into real-world consequences.

The streaming service has again teamed with Raw TV, the British production company behind hit film The Tinder Swindler, to make a series with the working title This Blew Up.

Netflix declined to comment on the project, but Deadline understands that production is underway on a five-part series. Raw did not respond to a request for comment.

Each episode of This Blew Up will spotlight a successful company, individual, or event that fell from grace or spiraled out of control, with the linking factor being that the downfall was enabled or escalated by social media.

It is unclear what stories will be featured, but the series will contain elements of drama reconstruction as Netflix explores the social, economic, and cultural factors that led to unforeseen difficulties.

These social media stories have become...

While some people can’t even get a text back, Simon Leviev of The Tinder Swindler was able to convince his dates to take out massive loans for him in the name of love. From private jets to lavish vacations, Leviev built a fake persona as the heir to a luxury diamond company. What is it about Leviev and other con artists that have us so fascinated? It could be realizing how easy it is to scam strangers out of millions, or even the feeling of schadenfreude from watching them get caught. If The Tinder Swindler piqued your curiosity, here are nine scandalous titles to stream next.

American Nightmare, along with other true crime docuseries, delves into bizarre and mind-bending criminal cases that challenge viewers' perceptions of the truth. The Tinder Swindler and Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey are examples of docuseries that explore complex crimes and reveal the darker realities behind seemingly ordinary situations. Similar to American Nightmare, The Most Hated Man on the Internet, Don't F**k with Cats, and Making a Murderer shed light on unique stories, controversial figures, and flawed justice systems.

Netflix's latest true crime docuseries, American Nightmare, has captivated audiences with its gripping tale of Denise Huskins' kidnapping. For fans intrigued by twists, turns, and unbelievable mysteries, these comparable docuseries are sure to provide entertainment. Netflix strikes gold once again with its newest jaw-dropping true crime release, American Nightmare. The docuseries brings viewers into the bizarre kidnapping of Denise Huskins in 2015, an event that initially seemed too wild to be anything but a hoax.

It’s slightly ironic that Tinder has chosen London’s creative neighborhood of Shoreditch as a key target for its first global ad campaign, splashing some major spend on scores of bold, brightly colored billboards asserting that it all “starts with a swipe.” Although the area’s demographic — hectic, switched-on 20- and 30-somethings forever glued to their phones and laptops — would seem the perfect audience, it’s unlikely that many realize that just around the corner from the hoardings sits the company responsible for making the dating app’s most notorious swiper globally famous.

Raw, the production banner that now sits over three busy floors of an otherwise unremarkable office block on Curtain Road — once home to the U.K.’s earliest theaters (Shakespeare would perform many of his plays nearby) — had had numerous hits before The Tinder Swindler dropped on Netflix in February 2022. But the feature documentary — unraveling the...

Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler director Felicity Morris has said the documentary market is going to contract and warned filmmakers against “chasing the next viral story that everyone is talking about.”

Speaking at the Berlinale Series Market, Morris and other European documentarians questioned whether the golden age of premium docs is coming to an end as buyers – especially the streamers – become more risk averse.

“We are hearing things are going to contract although there is definitely still an appetite for the best stories being told in the best way,” added Morris, who also produced Netflix’s Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer and is working on the same streamer’s All American Nightmare.

“I hope creativity will prevail and there might be a bit more risk taking in the stories that get commissioned but there will of course still be a plethora of shows for people to watch,...

The search was on this year for Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Will Smith, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith: They topped Google’s just-released list of the Top 10 actors who generated the most Google searches in 2022.

Not only did the five celebrities top Google’s year-end lists of the most-searched actors, they also accounted for four of the top five spots on the overall “People” list, with the only non-actor crashing that top five being Vladimir Putin at No. 4.

See all of the entertainment-related Top 10 Google Search lists below, and click on the image above for a photo gallery.

The most-searched movie? Thor: Love and Thunder, beating out runners-up Black Adam and Top Gun: Maverick. Among TV shows, searchers were most curious about Euphoria, with House of the Dragon at No. 2.

Searches related to celebrity deaths also were tallied, with Queen Elizabeth II taking the top spot, followed by Betty White,...

Following the success of Emmy-nominated “Tinder Swindler,” director Felicity Morris is already at work on Netflix’s miniseries “All American Nightmare,” she said at Rome’s Mia.

Morris, previously at Raw TV, started her own company Ladywell Films with “Tinder Swindler” producer Bernadette Higgins.

“It felt like the right time to do my own thing,” she said.

“All American Nightmare,” clocking in at three episodes, will be completed next summer. Raw TV is also on board.

“I have learnt a lot over the years and [when it comes to] true crime, there always needs to be a reason to tell that story,” she stated, admitting filmmakers should do more than just “rehash another story about a cold-blooded killer.”

“It has this amazing woman who fell victim to a horrendous crime. But it’s about more than that. It’s about victims not being believed, about the institutions that are meant to protect us and yet they fall short.

“Films that I’ve made have been about people who have been thrown into a wild, you-can’t-make-this-up kind of story,” says “The Tinder Swindler” writer and director, Felicity Morris. “For me, the best part of [documentary filmmaking] is that you get to go into these peoples’ homes. They trust you with their stories. If you were scripting it as a movie, you couldn’t make it up any better.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

The Netflix documentary spotlights a group of women who were the victims of a dating app based swindler. They joined forces in an attempt to hunt down the con artist who calls himself Simon Leviev and recover the millions of dollars that were stolen from them. The film is nominated for five Emmys including Best Documentary or Nonfiction Special.

See over 200 interviews with 2022 Emmy nominees

“We heard about the story because Cecilie [Fjellhøy] had gone to the press in Norway,...

Click here to read the full article.

Outstanding Documentary Or Nonfiction Series

The Andy Warhol Diaries (Netflix)

Writer-director Andrew Rossi and exec producer Ryan Murphy draw from the 1989 book of the same name to offer an intimate portrait of the late artist’s public and private lives. It dropped March 9 (more recently than any competitor), is rated 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and landed three other noms, including directing and writing.

The Beatles: Get Back (Disney+)

The Beatles Get Back Documentary

Disney+, the service behind 2021’s winner, Secrets of the Whales, returns to contention with Peter Jackson’s remarkable depiction — drawing from 57 hours of film and 140 hours of audio — of The Beatles’ prep for their final public performance on a London rooftop in 1969. Its five nominations (directing among them) are a category high.

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Netflix)

Kanye ‘Ye’ West in jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy.

Filmed over two decades and...

There are smooth talkers, and then there’s Simon Leviev. Compared to him, most conmen are slick as sandpaper.

This is how Simon rolled: go on the dating app Tinder, pose as a guy looking for love. Attributes: handsome, emotionally available, sharp dresser, and oh yeah, rich. Really rich. With pluses like that, who wouldn’t swipe right? A lot of smart, beautiful, even sophisticated women did, as revealed in the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler.

“The women in the film, first and foremost, they were looking for a boyfriend. They were single, a bit lonely. And that was why they were on Tinder swiping, swiping,” explains director Felicity Morris. “Certainly, they saw in Simon something that would take them out of their ordinary life. There were pictures of him on private jets. He looked like a businessman. And I think that, for them, was really attractive.”

Norwegian-born Cecilie Fjellhøy...

Exclusive: Warner Bros. Unscripted Television, the division run by Mike Darnell, is entering the feature documentary acquisitions market with its first big purchase – rights to Canadian true-con doc The Talented Mr. Rosenberg.

While the unit has produced documentaries such as HBO Max’s LGBTQ series Equal and Epix’s Charles Manson series Helter Skelter as well as an upcoming DC Comics doc, this marks the first time that it has picked up the global rights, outside of Canada, to a doc coming out of a market.

The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, which tells the story of Canadian jet-setting con artist Albert Rosenberg, who is described as a cross between Bernie Madoff and The Tinder Swindler Simon Leviev, recently premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Warner Bros. Unscripted Television, in association with its sibling Warner Horizon, will now shop it to broadcasters and streamers in the U.S. and internationally outside of Canada,...

Click here to read the full article.

Two recent Netflix true-crime titles have explored a form of domestic abuse that many people don’t know about: coercive control, which, according to Laura Richards, a criminal behavioral analyst formerly of New Scotland Yard who also trained with the FBI and created and hosts the Crime Analyst and Real Crime Profile podcasts, means “a set of behaviors that’s designed to isolate, to entrap and to exploit — but most of all, to dominate another person.”

In 2019, Bravo debuted Dirty John, based on a podcast of the same name by the Los Angeles Times‘ Christopher Goffard, which chronicled wealthy interior designer Debra Newell’s relationship with John Meehan, a con man with a history of manipulating and deceiving women using coercive control. Now, documentaries like The Tinder Swindler and the docuseries Bad Vegan have delved deeper into this type of behavior, which can...

Israeli conman Simon Leviev conned a number of women out of a lot of money on dating app Tinder.

His actions, however, have helped Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler become the streamer’s most-watched doc to date.

Netflix revealed during its financial results that, with 166M hours watched in its first 28 days, the feature doc from The Imposter and Don’t F*ck with Cats producer Raw TV, AGC Television and Gaspin Media has topped its list.

Last year, the streamer noted that American Murder: The Family Next Door was its most watched documentary with around 52M subscribers watching (the streamer has subsequently changed the way it reports its data).

The Tinder Swindler, which launched February 2, recorded 45.8M hours in its four days on the service, before rising to 64.7M in its first full week.

The doc, which was directed by Felicity Morris, looks at Leviev’s cons as well...

The Tinder Swindler is back—and he's sharing his side of the story. Simon Leviev, the subject of the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, went live on Instagram on March 28 to answer all sorts of questions about the movie, his lifestyle, accusations against him and his future plans. The question remains, however: Do we believe him? The 31-year-old Leviev is the globe-trotting con man accused of coercing more than $10 million from women all around the world using the dating app Tinder. He would match with unsuspecting women on the app, get into relationships with them or befriend them, and then get money from them. Many of the victims that he manipulated—both emotionally and...

The Netflix true-crime documentary The Tinder Swindler follows the crimes of serial fraudster Shimon Hayut. Hayut posed as Simon Leviev, who claimed to be the son of a diamond mogul on the popular dating app Tinder. Under the false identity, Hayut charmed various women and trick them into loaning him money. The scheme was able […]

The post Who Is The Real ‘Tinder Swindler’ Shimon Hayut? Where Is He Now? appeared first on uInterview.

Shimon Hayut, aka Simon Leviev, the subject of Netflix's true-crime documentary "The Tinder Swindler," is facing a lawsuit, People reports. According to court documents obtained by the outlet, Israeli Russian diamond tycoon Lev Leviev and his family are suing Hayut for millions after he allegedly impersonated them and used their last name to enrich himself. The lawsuit, which was filed in Tel Aviv, Israel, alleges that "for a long time, he [Simon Leviev] has been making false representations as being the son of Lev Leviev and receiving numerous benefits (including material ones)."

Hayut has been "cunningly using false words, claiming to be a member of the Leviev Family, and that his family will pay and bear the costs of his benefits," the family added.

"The Tinder Swindler" documentary, which premiered on Netflix on Feb. 2, alleges that Hayut changed his name and claimed to be the son of Leviev on the dating app Tinder,...

The Tinder Swindler is now facing a formal lawsuit over his alleged actions.

Shimon Hayut, who went by Simon Leviev on social media, was dubbed “The Tinder Swindler” by a Netflix documentary of the same name after allegedly scamming multiple women for a total of $10 million. Hayut used the alter ego Leviev name claiming he was the son of the Israeli Russian diamond tycoon Lev Leviev.

As of March 1, the real-life Leviev and his family filed a lawsuit against Hayut for impersonating their name and using it to build up his own image. (Via People.)

As detailed in court documents obtained by the outlet and filed by Leviev in Tel Aviv, the family claims that “for a long time, he [Hayut] has been making false representations as being the son of Lev Leviev and receiving numerous benefits (including material ones).”

The documents allege that Hayut has been “cunningly using false words,...

Simon Leviev has swiped his way to a lawsuit. The subject of the mega-popular Netflix true-crime documentary The Tinder Swindler is being sued by the Leviev family, according to the document obtained by E! News on Feb. 28. In the documentary, he was accused of pretending to be a member of the Leviev family to attract women on the dating app Tinder, before allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from his victims. In a statement to E! News, Chagit Leviev, the daughter of Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev and an heiress to the family's fortune, said the multi-million dollar lawsuit aims to get Simon (born Shimon Hayut) to "face justice and get the sentence he...

Simon Leviev, the so-called “Tinder Swindler,” is being sued by the diamond-rich family he claimed to be a part of as he allegedly bilked millions from young women he met on the dating app.

The lawsuit was filed in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court in Israel on behalf of the Leviev family, whose patriarch, Lev Leviev, is a billionaire diamond magnate. The website for the Leviev family’s lawyer, Guy Ophir, confirmed the suit had been filed.

While Ophir did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment,...

Celebrities showed up in droves for Sunday’s SAG Awards, driving the first big awards show of the year (and since the pandemic) to the top of Variety’s Trending TV chart for the week of Feb. 21 to 27. The show collected an impressive 3.6 million engagements during its broadcast on TNT and TBS, earning more than nine times that of this week’s runner-up, “Euphoria.”

The emotional and politically charged telecast doled out top prizes to projects like “Coda,” “Ted Lasso” and “Succession.” The internet also followed along as winner Will Smith (“King Richard”) teared up during his acceptance speech, Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”) became the first Latina to win a film award from the Guild and the cast of “Squid Game” made history. Twitter also lit up when Michael Keaton was in the restroom when Salma Hayek announced his “Dopesick” acting win. He later delivered a tearful tribute to his late nephew.