Netflix Gave An Unproven Director $55 Million For A Sci-Fi Series, And He Blew It On Rolls-Royces, Crypto, And Dodgy Stock Bets

Netflix essentially took a $62 million television contract out to the shed and shot it in the head, according to an ongoing arbitration case against director Carl Erik Rinsch. After an ambitious and expensive bet on an unproven director in 2018, the deal had gone sour, the director allegedly lost his senses, and he’d blown the money with nothing to show for it. The plug was pulled on the project, Netflix washed its hands of the deal, and it came up for air missing some $55 million from its accounts. At least $9 million of that had gone to the director’s lavish tastes, as he’d bought himself five Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, a $400,000 watch, and millions worth of furniture and clothing.

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In 2018, while streaming services were expanding their scripted drama series offerings to the moon and back, relatively unknown director Rinsch pitched a series around Hollywood that incited a bidding war. Amazon, HBO, Hulu, Apple, all the big players were interested. At the last possible second, Netflix snatched the project away from Amazon, agreeing to a $61.2 million budget, and hoping for a sci-fi success in the vein of its runaway success Stranger Things. The show’s format was different, with episodes ranging from just four minutes to ten minutes, and the 13-episode first season would have totaled just two hours of runtime.

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Rinsch’s only previous film credit, the 2013 Keanu Reeves vehicle 47 Ronin, was a critical and financial flop, garnering just $150 million at the box office from an estimated $225 million dollar budget. When he brought the show to Netflix, then called “Conquest”, it revolved around a “genius who invents a humanlike species called the Organic Intelligent.” The O.I. are deployed for humanitarian aid, but they eventually turn on humanity or something, it’s not really clear, and not entirely all that interesting. Certainly not something I’d gamble $62 million on. Especially when the show didn’t have a completed script, Rinsch demanded final cut approval, there were ongoing legal battles with the show’s previous financiers (production company 30West received $14 million of the $62 million from Netflix as part of a settlement), and Rinsch was known in Hollywood for missing deadlines and going rogue.

During shoots for the show in Budapest, Rinsch allegedly went days without sleep, mistreated the production team and actors, threw things at his wife and show co-creator, Gabriela Rosés Bentancor, accused her of plotting to assassinate him, and punched holes in walls. Ms. Rosés and others grew concerned that Rinsch had been abusing the ADHD prescription drug Vyvanse, which is an amphetamine which when overused can cause mania, delirium, and psychosis.

In March of 2020, Rinsch told Netflix that he’d spent the $44.3 million that they’d approved up to that point, and needed another $11 million. When Netflix acquiesced and wired the money, Rinsch sent most of it directly to his personal Charles Schwab account, and made big bets on biotech firm Gilead Sciences, and on shorting the S&P 500 index. In just a few weeks he’d lost $5.9 million. Cutting his losses, Rinsch pulled $4 million from his Schwab account and put it directly into Dogecoin. Wow, such invest.

Between his Dogecoin binge and Netflix pulling the plug on his show in March of 2021, Rinsch was allegedly holed up in his apartment slowly losing his mind. During a visit from his wife, Ms. Rosés claims that Mr. Rinsch pointed at airplanes overhead and said ‘the organic, intelligent forces… came to say hi.’ His contact at Netflix confirmed that they’d been receiving strange indecipherable doodles from the director by text message. Rinsch also claimed he had mapped “the coronavirus signal emanating from within the earth.” His wife initiated divorce proceedings in July of 2021.

Two months after Netflix had ended his show, in May of 2021, Rinsch liquidated his Dogecoin to the tune of $27 million. “Thank you and god bless crypto,” Mr. Rinsch wrote to a Kraken crypto exchange representative who helped him with the transaction.

When asked during a legal deposition about the cars, clothes, watches and furniture, Rinsch claimed that they were props purchased for the set of “Conquest” and that he’d paid for them directly with the production money from Netflix. He changed his tune in a later arbitration case with Netflix, where he claimed that not only was the money contractually his to do with what he pleased, but Netflix owed him more than $14 million in unpaid invoices.