Virality can take people down unthinkable routes. Netflix is developing a movie based on the story of a message to the wrong user. It is a production inspired by the history of The Thanksgiving Text, which could be translated as “The message of thanksgiving.” What is the origin of this project? A viral story on Twitter which currently has more than 141 likes and more than 43 thousand retweets.
On November 15, 2016, user Jamal Hinton shared a tweet with his followers, including some screenshots. In them you can read how a person, by mistake, invites you to Thanksgiving dinner. Although one of the possibilities was that the person canceled the invitation by not knowing Hinton, it turned out the opposite: the proposal remained on the table.
Netflix will take this story to its platform. This is another example of how producers are hunting possible stories within social networks. Prior to everything related to The Thanksgiving Text, other productions inspired by viral stories on social networks were Zola (Janicza Bravo, 2020) and Bad ass, to cite just a few examples.
Netflix and movie confirmation from The Thanksgiving Text
The adaptation of Jamal Hinton’s story was confirmed by the user himself through his Twitter profile. In the message, Hinton appears along with Wanda Dench, the other protagonist of the story. She was the one who accidentally invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. The confusion, tweeted, generated multiple comments and reactions. Meanwhile, between then and now, a friendship developed between the two, Hinton and Dench.
Part of the evolution of that relationship has been shared by Hinton with his followers on Twitter, as if it were a new chapter in a production. Paradoxes of life, through Netflix it will become a mass consumer product. According to information from VarietyFor both Hinton and Dench there has been a notable increase in the number of followers of their profiles: today, Hinton has more than 129,000 followers on Twitter and Dench has more than 26,000.
As if the above were not enough, throughout these years Dench again invited Hinton to his home. The detail not only involved him again but also his family. The last meeting, according to information also from Variety, it was a little more moving than usual because this time they could not count on Dench’s husband, because he had failed due to COVID-19.
At first glance, the story seems to have all the components to make for an engaging tale. It remains to wait for Netflix to provide more information on a possible release date or the cast selected. At the moment, it is known that the author of the script is Abdul Williams.