Netflix gives away $55 million

[Famous Mortimer]

https://www.ign.com/articles/47-ronin-director-reportedly-blew-netflix-sci-fi-series-budget-on-stocks-and-crypto

Very little about this story makes sense. Carl Rinsch, who made "47 Ronin" back in 2013 to critical indifference / dislike, and nothing at all since, was the subject of a bidding war between Amazon and Netflix for some fairly ordinary-sounding sci-fi TV show called "Conquest".

Netflix gave him $44 million, and he did absolutely nothing with it. He then asked for and received another $11 million in 2020, and blew it on a fleet of high-end cars, then stocks and crypto. Not a single episode has been completed, and Netflix wrote it off recently. Now, he's suing them, claiming they owe him another $14 million!

It's a lot of stupidity in a very small space. How Rinsch convinced executives from two different mega-corporations to offer him so much money, despite his only previous work being a flop. How Netflix didn't apparently check what their money was being spent on. How Rinsch was able to spend so much of a production budget on dogecoin.

We should probably have pitched something to Netflix as a collective in 2018, we could have all retired on the money.

[Senior Baiano]

Ah, they'll be looking to spin this off as a true crime documentary

[PlanktonSideburns]

Rinsch sent strange emails to Netflix executives involved in the project, stating that he had a way to map "the coronavirus signal emanating from within the earth." His wife filed for divorce; in 2021 according to his wife's lawyers, Rinsch told her that airplanes were "organic, intelligent forces" and that he sent texts to her saying he had the power to predict lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions

Sounds like he was in some sort of amphetamine fuse, fair play to him on Carl Rinse-ing Netflix mind

[Ferris]

More power to his coked-up elbow.

[dissolute ocelot]

I've watched 47 Ronin but remember nothing about it. Keanu Reeves played a Samurai. It wasn't the Tom Cruise samurai movie. It sounds as if they guy was getting divorced at the same time as blowing all his money on crypto, so possibly there was an element of "if I put it all into dogecoin my wife can't get it". That said, if you gave me $55 million and I spent $49,999,000 on sportscars, hookers, and NFTs of sportscars and hookers, I guarantee I'd still make a TV show better than Amazon's Lord of the Rings: Blah Blah Blah.

[Uncle TechTip]

I've always thought Netflix and probably Amazon have no real idea how to make TV and just throw money at anyone who charms them and it seems I was right. Netflix in particular is a debt mountain with no real assets of longevity and I give it five years if they keep giving money to the wrong people because they're a tech company, not a TV producer.

[shoulders]

There are always acceptable losses in pursuit of growth, I'm not sure the person in charge of curating content for Netflix is in charge or has an approximate handle on anything that's happening, but they ultimately don't care in all probability.

[beanheadmcginty]

Maybe they were confused and thought he'd directed Ronin.

[Ferris]

Maybe they were confused and thought he'd directed Ronin.

Or 46 sequels to it

[convulsivespace]

I suspect the reporting on this is a little misleading. It's not like a company wires the entire production budget to the director's personal account. He probably blew all of his director's fee on the aforementioned sports cars and cryptocurrency, which is why the ex-wife is angry.