The wheel of audiovisual content creation is an inexhaustible source, with streaming platforms being responsible for making this happen today. These types of services depend on the launch of new titles to guarantee their economic stability and continue growing as companies. It is because of that few people’s pulse trembles when it comes to investing in a new production They know that it could be a disaster.
Netflix is one of those companies that has the necessary financial muscle to be able to afford not to overthink things when investing in new titles for its platform. However, this has led to some problems. And it is that What we are going to tell you in this article can even be enough for a movie. for said platform.
An investment that Netflix would regret shortly after
In 2018, Netflix bought the license to a science fiction series that was going to be directed by Carl Rinsch, director of a single film, ’47 Ronin’. Rinsch was already in negotiations for the series to be released on Prime Video, however, he still had no written contract. At that moment Netflix intervened and proposed, in addition to an eight-figure contract, almost total budgetary and creative freedomsomething that rarely happens in the industry.
Netflix would soon regret this contract, since two years later, in 2020, no episode had yet been produced and the firm spent a total of $44 million. Production was apparently faltering and Rinsch asked for $11 million more. However, according to evidence obtained by The New York Times, Rinsch used that money for his own investments.among them in the pharmaceutical industry, from which it lost 6 million dollars a few weeks after getting the money from Netflix.
That wasn’t all. And among his investments he also transferred more than 4 million dollars to an exchange platform to buy cryptocurrencies, in this case Dogecoin. As mentioned by the Times, unlike his past investments, this one turned out to be a success, since when he liquidated his positions in 2021, obtained a net balance of about 27 million dollars.
“Thank you and God bless cryptocurrencies,” Rinsch wrote in an online chat with a representative of the Kraken exchange.
Obviously, no company would be happy if someone was playing with their money for their own benefit. For this reason, once Netflix found out about the facts, it ended financing the project and sued him. According to a forensic accountant hired by his wife during their divorce proceedings, Rinsch spent the money on luxury vehicles, watches, designer clothing and more. His expenses amounted to 8.7 million dollars.
Rinsch He justified these expenses with the fact that they were going to be part of props material. for ‘Conquest’, the title of his science fiction series that he was directing. However, in confidential documents he argued that the money was contractually his and that Netflix owed him several more payments totaling more than $14 million.
A hearing related to the case was held this month. From the Times they assure that a sentence is expected shortly, so we will have to wait to find out what Rinsch’s future will be, since we know from the series that it was canceled by Netflix given the circumstances.
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