A very strange movie: Z-channels spent months talking about a fake documentary with Tom Cruise about corruption in the IOC, but the series never became a global sensation

When the Verified editors select topics for future reviews, one of our main criteria there is a high level of retransmission and citation of a particular story in the media. In other words, the media, large Telegram channels, and hundreds of ordinary social network users should write about suspicious news, a dubious photo or video. However, in this text we will talk about a unique fake, traces of which have been seen by millions of people, but few people know about the fake itself. “Verified” tells how for several months on social networks, inside fakes about Ukraine (and not only), a documentary project allegedly shot by Netflix (but in fact generated using a neural network) about abuses at the top of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was advertised.

Pilot

At the end of June, “Verified” discovered in Telegram allegedly filmed by the Al Jazeera TV channel video about the disaster of the deep-sea submersible "Titan". As stated in the video, Ukrainians on social networks reproached the crew for wasting money, because it could have been donated to support Ukraine. We found out, that in fact the story has nothing to do with one of the largest Middle Eastern media outlets. This was one of the works of the fake factory, which regularly stamps videos that mimic the stories of well-known and authoritative foreign media. However, in that case there was still something unusual - at the end of the video it was said that the British tycoon Hamish Harding (one of dead on board the Titan) allegedly sponsored the filming of a certain documentary project for Netflix about corruption in the leadership of the IOC, headed by Thomas Bach.

The name of the project, Olympics Has Fallen, could be seen on the poster that was shown in that video - the poster was allegedly hung at a public transport stop (this is another very common view fakes). The phrase Olympics Has Fallen can be translated as “The Fall of the Olympics” - the name was probably chosen by analogy with the action movie “Olympus Has Fallen"(Olympus Has Fallen). Judging by oddities and artifacts in the image of Cruise's face (such as the unusual shape of the wrinkles on his forehead that blend into his hair and his puffy-looking left eye), it's likely that the poster for this supposedly original Netflix documentary was generated by a neural network. If you check filmography actor on any film portal or library streaming service, you won’t be able to find a similar series there, of course.

There is a link to the website at the bottom of the fake poster olympicshasfallen.com, which stopped working shortly after we discovered it in the summer. However, “Verified” succeeded archive copies of pages from Google cache. According to services, revealing domain registration information, the site was created back in early June 2023. In this case, all information about the domain owner hidden from third party users.

Unfortunately, “Verified” does not have any screenshots of the site, and the available archive pages do not allow us to fully appreciate what it looked like. However, even from the text versions it is clear that the authors of the project tried to disguise their website as an official landing page: links to real Netflix pages on social networks were added, as well as logos and banners of the series and the streaming platform. Moreover, on the same resource it was offered to watch all the episodes of the series without a subscription and absolutely free.

The impromptu promotional campaign for the series could not ignore YouTube. An empty account was used to post videos on this platform, created back in August 2019. However, at the time of writing this text, everything trailers And excerpts from the documentaries published on this channel are no longer available (their traces remained in Google's archived cache). Judging by the data preserved on the Internet, the series did not make a splash on YouTube: only five people subscribed to the profile (including the author of “Verified”), at the beginning of July all videos had a total of just over 4,000 views.

Synopsis

The series itself consists of four episodes, each of which lasts about nine and a half minutes (that is, the total duration of the fake project was almost 40 minutes, which is significantly longer than all fabricated videos that have previously sorted it out "Checked") Project synopsis reads: “This exclusive documentary series opens a Pandora's box of previously unknown financial and sporting scandals involving the IOC and its leaders, led by Thomas Bach. You will learn how the IOC works and how Bach’s corruption schemes fit into its structure, what fate awaits boxing, how much Olympic champions are actually paid and what the IOC spends its budgets on.”

The scriptwriters even did some semblance of journalistic work. They collected many articles O happened in different years in different countries, corruption scandals that affected various sports organizations (including the IOC), and then connected it all with the leadership of the Olympic Committee. In the series itself, links to all media materials used are carefully provided via QR codes.

Although all four videos are edited as if Tom Cruise himself is conducting the entire investigation from the first person, adding some facts from his biography, in fact there is not a single original frame with the actor (but there are many animated inserts on the theme of Ancient Greece) and it is not shown how he pronounces the words heard off-screen. Apparently, the authors used a neural network, with the help of which they voiced the entire series. By the way, transcripts of each episode were published on the website along with the video.

Brief summary of each episode:

1. "Olympic Games. Or the fall of Olympus. Start»
   “On the creation of the IOC and the appearance of two-faced members in its ranks. You will learn how criminal organizations help some IOC members rob sports federations. What is John Coates, one of the vice-presidents of the IOC, famous for? And what title will be awarded by the IOC in 2021?”
   
2. "IOC money»
   “How does the financial structure of the IOC function and how are funds actually distributed within the Olympic movement? What privileges do high-ranking members of the IOC enjoy and what benefits do athletes receive at the foot of the sports Olympus?”
   
3. "Mafia Bach, or Stratagem Wu»
   “How did the International Boxing Association get a knockout blow? Who covers up the deals of Bach and his henchmen and why do the names of the main participants in sports scandals disappear from the reports of the IOC Ethics Commission?
   
4. "Bach from Olympus»
   “Annual allowance of $250,000 and accommodation in a five-star hotel in Switzerland. What other privileges does IOC President Thomas Bach receive? And how did he make his way to the top of the IOC, taking over the entire Olympic movement and making his power absolute?”

It’s funny that despite the complexity of creating such a fake, its authors made mistakes in seemingly the simplest things. For example, on the site as the creators of the feed indicated directors Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey and Johnny Hughes (who allegedly co-produced with Tom Cruise) and editor Martin Elsbury are these people filmed documentary filmDavid Attenborough: Life on our planet", released on Netflix in 2020. At the same time, in the credits of all episodes of "The Fall of the Olympics" other film makers are listed (of course, not counting Cruise): producers Bert Marcus and Cassandra Hamar, executive producers Brett Gursky and Ben Lyons, editors Chavdar Georgiev and Monica Zavistovsky, as well as other team members, who filmed 2018 Netflix documentary "American meme"

Promotional campaign

When the Verified editors first learned about the series, we decided that the story about Cruise, the IOC and Netflix would soon be promoted in Z-channels as an independent high-profile story. To our surprise, despite the scale and complexity of the fake, this never happened - over the course of six months, we were able to detect only two small centers of distribution of posts that directly mentioned the series.

The first time this happened was on June 28, when the same fake Al Jazeera video went viral. Then in Telegram channels "DPR Info" And "Guard", which many once became heroes of our analyses, wrote separately about the fictitious conspiracy theory mentioned in the story, according to which the Titan was sunk to kill the investor of the documentary about Bach. Those publications received 51,000 and 7,700 views (were And other, but they collected less than 1000). At the same time, the most popular (153,000 views) was the channel’s post “Evil proof️", where, despite the general pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, the video allegedly from Al Jazeera was called fake. “Fakes like hot cakes are flying all over social networks, because channel administrators are simply too lazy to check them for authenticity,” it is written in the Telegram channel, which tens once there was caught on spreading lies.

The second round of popularity occurred on July 13th. Then the reason was the statement of Umar Kremlev, the president of the International Boxing Association, which the IOC three weeks earlier deprived status and, accordingly, the opportunity to participate in the Olympics. A sports functionary on his social networks wrote: “All those who are involved in dirty political games within sports will eventually leave our Olympus!” In a number of Telegram channels there were assumptions (and in some places, statements) that in this way the Kremlin “made a reference to the new scandalous documentary series of Tom Cruise.” In particular, such posts appeared in “Signal"(67,000 views), "Urgently, now"(40,000), "Babskaya smoking room" (35,000), "Urgent and accurate - news digest"(30,000) and Kremlin_Russian (28,000).

Change of distributor

By that time, the series’ website was no longer working, and in some posts about Kremlin they gave a link to the Telegram channel of the same name, created still July 3rd. There, the authors of the fake on behalf of Cruz published an explanation for the closure of their resource. “Mr. Bach, I knew that you would hunt down and destroy mirrors of my site in the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and other countries. The Netflix team and I created thousands of mirrors of “The Fall of the Olympics” on Telegram (in fact, we didn’t create it. - Ed.). You are on one of them right now. Cartoon Hollywood villain Thomas. Millions already know who you are. Sincerely, Tom and the Netflix team,” allegedly wrote Hollywood actor in the first post of the channel. “Verified” did not find any explanations as to why the series cannot be posted on the website of the streaming service for which it was supposedly filmed. All four episodes are posted on the Telegram channel, and the downloaded files are named accordingly Olympics_ep_01_v017, Olympics_ep02_v011, Olympics_ep03_v011 And Olympics_ep04_v009 - if the last two digits indicate the version number, it turns out that each series was remade many times.

Among other content in the Telegram channel Olympics Has Fallen available a banner with reviews from eminent Western publications, which supposedly gave the series the highest rating. Among them:

• The Washington Post: “Bold and honest. The world needs to know what happens at the top of the sports Olympus!”; 
• The New York Times: “The seemingly impossible mission is complete. Tom Cruise is trying to save world sports from oblivion”; 
• BBC: “A documentary project that reveals the ugly side of world sport!”;
• The Daily Beast: “An unprecedented documentary series about how much sports are worth and who makes the most money from it. Spoiler! These are not athletes."

The last post in the channel is the one posted on July 6 selection of five fake Instagram* stories allegedly published on the accounts of musicians, actors and athletes. Among these stars:

• Ozzy Osbourne: Tom Cruise, I'm not Iron Man. You are Iron Man." Moreover Iron Man for some reason it is written together;
• Jared Leto: Long live Netflix. Long live Tom Cruise. Long live Pavel Durov. No villain can get rid of the truth";
• Miley Cyrus: “Blow them to smithereens, Tom!”;
• Mike Tyson: “Tom Cruise, this is a knockout for Bach and his idiots!”;
• David Beckham: “Tom, I watched your show on Netflix with my family. Happy to be part of this project!”

Each of these stories allegedly contained a link to the series’ Telegram channel (apparently, hence the praise for the platform’s creator). Of course, advertising a non-existent Netflix project in non-existent posts by celebrities with a multimillion-dollar audience did not bring subscribers to the channel. Judging by data from the TGStat service, the account owners artificially increased the number of readers at the beginning and end of July, and even then at the peak it had just over 5,700 subscribers. At the same time, all channel records have from 100,000 to 250,000 views, but they were also inflated, which is also visible in the statistics on TGStat.

Multiverse

"Checked" before had dealing with fake stories, which were mainly aimed at discrediting Ukraine and President Vladimir Zelensky. Among them were regular screenshots of accounts Media, establishments And brands, and fabricated rollers stars In the case of the fake series about the IOC, it was celebrity stories that were used especially actively (not forgetting, of course, at the same time support and nothing not backed up, but very popular statements that Zelensky uses drugs). Moreover, at some point, the people responsible for both the dissemination of this narrative and the promotional campaign for the series began to purchase real video messages from the stars on the service Cameo and edit them into stories about the Ukrainian president. We tracked seven such celebrity videos, which we estimate cost around $2,000. Then, according to the already established traditions A fact-checking journalist from the BBC was accused of creating such video messages and even a documentary series. That is, even the authors themselves, who spent months creating fakes, eventually indirectly admitted that there was no Cruz project about the IOC.

In total, “Verified” discovered almost two dozen fake photos, screenshots, images and videos that referred to Cruz’s pseudo-documentary. In the summer and fall of 2023, they were published approximately once a week, but sometimes more often. Note that the list may be incomplete, because we could have missed something in the flow of thousands of posts from Z-channels (to which we are also grateful for their help - every time the publication contained a reference to the “Fall of the Olympics,” we immediately realized that this was another fake).

• June 22: the above-mentioned fake Al Jazeera video about the Titan and the Ukrainians appeared, where they showed a poster for the series and gave a conspiracy theory about the sinking of the ship. Our analysis can be read here.

• June 30: in the Telegram channel “Why do women kill crests?"(2,300 views) posted a fabricated screenshot of an article on The Local's website, which stated that Thomas Bach allegedly supported the activists who staged a Koran burning rally in Stockholm. In the lower left corner of the image is an advertisement for "Tom Cruise's first documentary feature."
  
  Such a news note on the publication's website No and it wasn’t, but they distributed the screenshot according to the now classic scheme: the picture supposedly sent anonymous subscriber. Many of the channels that shared the fake are well known to regular readers of “Verified”: “Staff Correspondent"(105,000 views), "Signal"(78,000), AsiaToday (67,000), "Russia 2.0"(62,000), "Urgently, now"(42,000), Kremlin_Russian (29,000), "Guard" (8500), "Vzwater" (6500) and "Shkvarka News"(3400).

• July 4: A fake cover of the French magazine Courrier International appeared with a caricature of Vladimir Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron, at the top of which was the phrase “Netflix is ​​damaging the reputation of the IOC.” Our analysis can be read here.

• July 6: in the Telegram channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(12,000 views) another fake screenshot appeared from anonymous subscribers, this time allegedly made on the website of the Canadian newspaper La Presse. It was reported that they wanted to rename the Canadian national dish poutine, because due to the consonance of the name with the name of the Russian president, the owners of restaurants where such an item is on the menu receive threats. On the right side of the picture in the “Restaurants” section there is a new advertisement: “Tom Cruise’s favorite restaurants. Where Tom Cruise dined while filming Olympics Has Fallen. How Netflix created the most...
  
  On the site there is news about Cruz And renaming There are no dishes. The fake was distributed among others by the channels "Evil proof️"(145,000 views), "Soldiers of fortune"(40,000), "Sons of the Monarchy" (9600), "Bear" (7400), "V Hand of the Kremlin Z" (7300), "Vzwater" (6600) and "Shkvarka News"(3000).

• July 7: in the Telegram channel of the presenter of Channel One Olesya Loseva (8900 views) a fake cover of the American satirical magazine Humor Times has appeared. The cartoon depicts businessmen Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg beating Zelensky, and in the lower right corner there is a QR code with a link to the Olympics has fallen Telegram channel. Our analysis can be read here.

• July 13: several Telegram channels considered Umar Kremlev’s previously mentioned statement about Olympus to be a reference to the Tom Cruise series.
  
• July 20: fabricated stories of Elijah Wood appeared on the Internet with a video message to Zelensky, in which the actor allegedly advised the Ukrainian president to quit drugs and go to rehab. The video featured the logo of the tabloid TMZ. Along with those stories, the viral video also included other materials from the Lord of the Rings star’s Instagram. In particular, he allegedly promoted the mockumentary, writing: “Tom Cruise, bravo! Netflix, bravo! Best show I've ever watched!" Our analysis can be read here.

• July 27: A fake Reuters video spread, in which boxer Mike Tyson also allegedly offered Zelensky to undergo a rehabilitation course. At the end of the video, its creators recalled Wood’s fake advertisement for the series. Our analysis can be read here.

• August 2: a new fake video appeared with another fabricated appeal from the star to Zelensky. This time, the authors of the fake chose actor Dean Norris from the series “Breaking Bad” and the AFP agency. Posts promoting Cruise's series are also shown at the end of the video. Our analysis can be read here.

• August 7: A fake video was released allegedly from the French publication 20 minutes, which talked about Ukrainians demanding that the game Tetris be banned. A screenshot is shown at the end of the video pages streaming service Apple TV+ - judging by it, Cruise's documentary can now be watched there (in the fictional world of the fake authors, Netflix seems to have sold the rights to the series). Our analysis can be read here.

• August 16: another non-existent story with an appeal to Zelensky, this time from actor John C. McGinley, who became famous thanks to his role in the TV series “Scrubs.” The artist allegedly wrote: “Amazing, Tom! Fuck Bach." Our analysis can be read here.

• August 23: again fake stories, now with an appeal from the widow of Elvis Presley, who allegedly sent Cruise a heart along the way. Our analysis can be read here.

• August 31: another fake appeal to Zelensky, this time from System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian. This fake was made in two versions at once - with and without the Reuters logo. In the second case, the teaser for the series begins with the musician’s words about the fall. “After watching this in rehab, you will understand that your problems are nothing compared to those that Thomas Bach and his dirty corrupt officials will have,” wrote the authors of the fake on behalf of Odadjian. Our parsing.

• September 8: a fake Reuters video appeared (there is no such video on any of the agency’s resources, of course) stating that fact-checking journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh from BBC Verify was actually behind the creation of the appeals to Zelensky and Cruz’s film. However, such news was of almost no interest to Z-bloggers - for example, the channels “Optimist in civilian clothes"(9600 views) and "Life with Ra)))"(540).
  
  The authors of the fake made up the following story: “The BBC publication filed a lawsuit against its employee. BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh used his position in the company to promote a personal project. The journalist ordered American celebrities to contact Vladimir Zelensky with a recommendation to undergo drug addiction treatment. The stars posted sponsorship messages on Instagram. The accounts of actors Elijah Wood and John McGinley were deleted by the service. Shayan Sardarizadeh used this tactic to promote his own project, “The Fall of the Olympics,” which talks about corruption within the International Olympic Committee. All custom requests contained advertising banners. Olympics Has Fallen is a Netflix documentary series narrated by a deepfake version of Tom Cruise. The actor's agent and Netflix representatives deny any involvement in the project. The estimated cost of the advertising campaign is $1 million. The name of the project customer remains unknown. The series was promoted by Elijah Wood, John C. McGinley, Dean Norris and Priscilla Presley. These details became known thanks to the agent of boxer Mike Tyson, whose image Shayan Sardarizadeh used without prior agreement. Mike Tyson himself knew nothing about this.”
  
  Probably, this story was not told even in those few Z-channels where they had previously written about the series, because in this way they would have admitted to spreading a fake.

• September 13: It seems that the last fake appeal to Zelensky from a celebrity appeared, which we were able to track. This time I became the heroine Kate Flannery, who played Meredith Palmer on The Office. As usual, there is nothing original in the fake itself: the actress allegedly advised Zelensky to go to the clinic and published a video on her Instagram, where an advertisement for the Cruise series was also posted, and this video was allegedly posted on Z-channels sent subscriber.
  
  The earliest fake post appeared in the channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(10,000 views), the fabricated video was also posted by the channels "Heavenly"(145,000), "Uncle Slava on Telegram"(67,000), TG Team Russia (47,000), "Aggregator" (15,000), "V Hand of the Kremlin Z"(6700), Dankest (6600), "Bear" (6400) and "Shkvarka News"(3000). The fake was also posted on the channel “Optimist in civilian clothes"(10,000), where a few days earlier the so-called exposure of the author of such appeals was published.

• October 6: on the TV presenter’s Telegram channel Olesya Loseva (12,000 views) three appeared at once fake screenshot of the French websites Sud Ouest, L'Essor Isère and France Bleu. This time the fakes directly concerned Thomas Bach, who allegedly angered the French with such a joke about bedbug infestation in the capital: “The Olympic Games will be held in Paris. But if the situation does not change, then speed scabies will become an Olympic discipline.” Among other channels, this fake was published “Kholmogorov"(10,000 views) and "Conservative"(4500). Two of the images again featured advertisements for "The Fall of the Olympics."

• October 18: in the Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir"(111,000 views) posted a fake video from the French television company Canal+. It is reported that the IOC is allegedly considering introducing restrictions for the national teams of Israel and Palestine. “At the 141st session of the committee in Mumbai, the situation between Israel and Palestine was discussed. Director of the Committee for Communications Mark Adams said following the results: “The IOC Executive Committee expressed concern over the events of recent days and sympathy for all those affected by this tragic incident. The Committee came close to the issue of the possibility of applying a suspension procedure in relation to both representatives of the Israeli and Palestinian national teams, and in relation to the fans.” <...> The Olympic Committee is afraid of a repeat of the 1972 terrorist attack in Munich,” says the post, which also appeared in the “Kedmi's thoughts"(35,000 views), "Antichips"(22,000), "Roadside Picnic"(16,000) and Zanoza (7900).
  
  At the end, the authors talked about the supposed successes of the series: “It was previously reported that Netflix’s documentary project dedicated to the International Olympic Committee was included in the top 10 most watched series of 2023.” This is fake appeared shortly after the IOC announced the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee.

Reviews

In mid-November, almost five months after the first publications about the series with Tom Cruise appeared, it became known that the IOC knew about the existence of a discrediting campaign launched on the Internet. Even on the organization's website released a separate statement regarding all this fake news, which was also reported by the world's leading media (e.g. Politico And The New York Times).

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recently been confronted with a number of fake news stories targeting the committee. These messages are distributed on Telegram and other social networks in several languages.

For example, quotes purporting to be from IOC officials have recently been fabricated and added to fake news stories to give them legitimacy.

This is not the first time that the IOC has faced disinformation campaigns against the organization in the media. Earlier this year, an entire documentary project was created with defamatory content, false narratives and false information, using the artificial intelligence-generated voice of a world-famous Hollywood actor. The series was removed from social media platforms due to its fabricated and slanderous nature (at the time of writing this analysis, it is still available on Telegram. - Ed.). This all looks like part of an organized disinformation campaign.

The IOC will continue to monitor the situation and take action if necessary.

Moreover, how found out “Verified”, at the end of July, representatives of the IOC filed a complaint against the owner of the domain olympicshasfallen.com in connection with his violation of copyright for the use of symbols and the spread of misinformation. A certain Lucas Wolfs from the Netherlands was named as a defendant, who, however, did not take part in the proceedings. According to the decision, which on October 5 accepted Commission of the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the disputed domain name is transferred to the applicant, that is, the IOC.

Cliffhanger?

The documentary series Olympics Has Fallen is one of the most large-scale, multi-level, intricate and, of course, creative falsifications of the pro-Kremlin fake factory. At the same time, it was mainly distributed only as a secondary story, complementing other (mainly dedicated to Ukraine) fakes, so international media wrote about it only after the IOC statement. In the Russian-language segment of the Internet, individual (and few) notes about the fabricated series also did not become popular. However, this is easy to explain: the series itself was published in English without Russian subtitles, which seriously limited the number of potential viewers in the domestic market.

The question remains: who, according to the customers and performers, was this documentary aimed at, which was promoted mainly through Z-channels? For example, foreign users could easily go to Netflix and make sure that such a series was not there. People who speak English could understand that the voice of Tom Cruise is not real in the videos, and an ordinary Russian-speaking user of social networks would hardly watch four English-language videos with a total running time of almost 40 minutes. Although complex and time-consuming work was done, the distribution of the final product left much to be desired (compared to some other popular narratives).

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Olympics Has Fallen (Telegram)