Latest news with #CarlRinsch
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Netflix Gets Fall Trial Start Against Director Who Allegedly Scammed $11M Out Of Streamer
Netflix may never see the more than $11 million the streamer & the feds say Carl Rinsch owes them, but they will see the director in court later this year. In a hearing Thursday in federal court NYC Carl Rinsch entered a not guilty plea and Judge Jed S. Rakoff put a September 8, 2025 trial start date on the calendar. Indicted by the Department of Justice on March 18 for fraud, and 'engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity,' Rinsch is out on a $100,000 bond that he posted earlier this month. More from Deadline Naomi Baker & Jay Reeves To Lead New Tyler Perry Netflix Drama Feature 'Doing Life' 'Fubar' Season 2 Gets Summer Premiere Date; First-Look Images Reveal Carrie-Anne Moss As Arnold Schwarzenegger's Old Flame Meryl Streep In Talks To Play Aslan In Greta Gerwig & Netflix's Narnia Movie The director of the never completed and never to be seen android drama series White Horse/Conquest, the 47-year-old Rinsch could be incarcerated for the rest of his life if found guilty by a jury. Netflix wrote off its entire $55 million investment in the series in late 2020, but were awarded $11.8 million in mid-2024 out of arbitration proceedings with the 47 Ronin filmmaker. Rinsch is due on the West Coast later this month for a debtor's examination in L.A. Superior Court. Having spent millions on credit cards, lawyers, five Rolls-Royces and one Ferrari, luxury hotels, watches and antiques, Rinsch now claims to be totally broke. Netflix's outside attorneys want a through inventory of his assets and belongings to see if they can squeeze any of the cash they are owned from the Rinsch stone. Contacted this afternoon by Deadline, Netflix reps had no comment on the hearing in the Big Apple earlier Thursday. Arrested in the City of Angels by the feds and cops on March 18, Rinsch is 'charged with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and five counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison,' according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Coming off the flop of 2013's 47 Ronin but armed with the friendship and backing of Keanu Reeves, once prominent commercial director Rinsch found himself and the show then known as White Horse in the middle of a bidding war in 2018. Then Netflix exec Cindy Holland yanked the project out of the hands of Amazon with a $61 million deal. Any sunshine and rainbows that came out of that soon turned dark as Rinsch blew through millions and millions with nothing to show for it. Essentially getting money for nothing ($44 million, to be exact) final-cut holding, Rinsch asked and received another $11 million from the company in 2020. The director, who may have some mental health issues according to court filings, said the funds were for various and pre-and post-production needs to complete the series. That never happened. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About 'Hacks' Season 4 So Far 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Director Carl Rinsch Pleads Not Guilty to Defrauding Netflix, Spending $11 Million Meant for Sci-Fi Series on Cars and Crypto
Carl Rinsch has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and money laundering, after the director was accused of taking $11 million from Netflix — meant for a sci-fi series that was never completed — and spending it on cars and cryptocurrency. Rinsch, who was out on a $100,000 bond, appeared in a downtown Manhattan courthouse Thursday afternoon for the arraignment, where a judge cracked jokes in a room packed with Columbia law students. Later in April, Rinsch is due back in civil court in Los Angeles for a debtor's examination by Netflix's lawyers. The entertainment company has obtained an $11.8 million judgment and is attempting to locate assets it may be able to seize. More from Variety 'Fubar' Season 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger Squares Off With Carrie-Anne Moss in First Look, Sets June Release Date Netflix Supports Brazilian Cinematheque Restoration With $875,000 Cash Donation Netflix's Medical Drama 'Pulse' Is Nearly Dead On Arrival: TV Review A trial date was set for Sept. 8, along with a continuation of Rinsch's bail conditions. Most of the evidence in this case has been handed over to the defense, but the prosecution said they have several hard drives and laptops for which they are currently attempting to breach security protocols. The judge set a May deadline for that evidence to be produced. If the case goes to trial, Rinsch could face up to 20 years in prison. Though, the judge said, 'I don't pay much attention to the [sentencing] guidelines,' calling them 'wholly irrational.' Rinsch was once an up-and-coming director whose futuristic ads for Heineken, BMW and Mercedes led to a job helming '47 Ronin,' an original samurai film starring Keanu Reeves. While the film flopped, costing Universal at least $120 million, Rinsch had powerful allies. He considered Ridley Scott a mentor, and Reeves would go on to invest in 'White Horse,' his short-form TV series about humanoid AI beings. That project bounced around Hollywood, attracting interest from Annapurna and Rian Johnson. Six episodes were shot, ranging from four to 10 minutes in length, with the plan to shoot seven more. In 2018, Netflix executives reviewed the script and agreed to put $44 million into completing the series — renamed 'Conquest' — while buying out the previous investors. After the series went back into production in Brazil, Rinsch went over budget. According to an arbitrator's ruling, there were numerous other problems, too, including casting issues and allegations of harassment and abuse on set. Netflix wired an additional $11 million to Rinsch to finish the first season of 'Conquest.' Prosecutors allege the director transferred the money into a personal account and later used it to buy cars and luxury goods (among them: a $28,000 sofa and two mattresses totaling $650,300), as well as gamble on cryptocurrency and the stock market. In 2020, Netflix wrote off the $55 million investment, causing Rinsch to spiral and send inflammatory emails to company executives, according to the ruling. At an arbitration hearing, Rinsch testified that this behavior was the result of his autism. 'Whatever's going on there, I can tell you it's not drug-induced,' he said. 'It's not mentally ill. It's exacerbating a different neurotype that most people might not be able to understand.' Rinsch allegedly went on spending sprees, and his cryptocurrency balance dropped from $26.7 million to $68,000 from May 2021 to May 2023. In 2024, he told a judge he was virtually broke, as Netflix moved to obtain its $11.8 million judgment. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
US director accused of scamming Netflix out of millions
Hollywood filmmaker Carl Rinsch was hired by Netflix to make a new science-fiction series. Instead, federal prosecutors say, he embezzled more than $11 million from the streaming giant and spent it on luxury cars and crypto. Rinsch, known for the 2013 film "47 Ronin" starring Keanu Reeves, was indicted this week on charges of wire fraud and money laundering and could face decades in prison if convicted in connection with the alleged scam. The indictment was filed in a federal court in New York and unsealed on Tuesday. The 47-year-old filmmaker was arrested the same day. "Carl Rinsch allegedly stole more than $11 million from a prominent streaming platform to finance lavish purchases and personal investments instead of completing a promised television series," FBI Assistant Director Leslie Backschies said in a statement. Although Netflix is never named in the filing, Rinsch was previously reported to be in a dispute with the company over a planned series initially titled "White Horse" and later renamed "Conquest." The indictment says the show was meant to focus on a scientist who created a group of powerful clones "banished to a walled area in a Brazilian city, where they began developing advanced technology and came into conflict with humans and each other." It features still photos from "six short-form episodes" that were apparently completed by Rinsch to pitch the show. He ultimately entered into a deal with Netflix to create a full season of episodes. That deal was reached "in or about 2018," the indictment says. Netflix then paid "approximately $44 million" for the show's production between 2018 and 2019, during the peak of the streaming boom. Those funds were transferred to Rinsch's production company, and his request for an additional $11 million to purportedly finish the project was granted. But Rinsch allegedly quickly transferred the money through a number of accounts for his own personal use. Among the purchases Rinsch allegedly made were luxury clothing and furniture, a Ferrari and five Rolls-Royces, dodgy stock market buys, investing in cryptocurrency, and paying for lawyers to sue the streamer and handle his divorce. "The FBI will continue to reel in any individual who seeks to defraud businesses," Backschies said. Netflix declined to comment when contacted by AFP about the case. pr/jgc/sst
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The director accused of taking $55m from Netflix – and blowing it on crypto and cars
It is commonplace in Hollywood today for television series and films to be commissioned at far too large a budget for them to enjoy the success that their producers and studios will hope for. Very occasionally, someone sees the light and pulls the plug on the unfinished product before it can run up even higher bills, with no chance of return. Yet the case of the director Carl Rinsch, who has been arrested for allegedly defrauding Netflix of $11 million, is something else. With the exception of Die Hard and Predator film-maker John McTiernan, who eventually ended up being imprisoned as a result of the awful behind-the-scenes shenanigans on his dire 2002 remake of Rollerball, Hollywood directors do not generally blur the line between personal liability and artistic investment. Yet Rinsch has been indicted for taking money that was intended to fund a Netflix sci-fi television series named White Horse, and instead spending on it a wide range of luxury items. The indictment has been made public, and it makes for eye-popping reading, as well as a Gatsbyian insight into how the rich – or would-be rich – live. Rinsch is said to have spent money that he received from Netflix on 'a number of extremely risky purchases of securities, including call options on a biopharmaceutical company' (which the indictment drily notes 'were not successful'), as well as significant cryptocurrency investments. Yet he didn't stint on his own personal comforts either, apparently. The indictment lists the various purchases that he made during the time that he was employed to work on the show, and they are significant. They include nearly $2 million on credit card bills, nearly $400,000 for accommodation at the Four Seasons hotel and various rental properties, 'approximately $3,787,000 on furniture and antiques, including approximately $638,000 to purchase two mattresses and approximately $295,000 on luxury bedding and linens', millions of dollars on cars, watches and clothing, and, hilariously, over $1 million on lawyers who were hired to sue Netflix for even more money. Were Rinsch an A-list director, or even someone with proven previous success, then he might have felt justified in asking for some of these extravagant luxuries. Yet his career, to date, is an undistinguished one that inadvertently shines a light on how many streaming companies are wasting vast amounts of money in pursuit of projects that may well never come to fruition, as long as some A-list star names are attached. That Rinsch had been making up fantastical stories from a young age – claiming that his father was a spy and that he grew up in Africa, whereas in fact he was the son of an insurance executive and he came of age in San Fernando Valley in California – did not bode well for what came next. The director came to prominence in 2010 when his short film The Gift, about a KGB agent delivering a mysterious present, won the Bronze Award at the Cannes Lions awards, along with the newly-created Film Craft Lion for Special Effects. This launched Rinsch, who had been directing advertisements for Mercedes and Heineken for the prestigious Ridley Scott Associates company, into the big leagues, and he was linked to some of the highest-profile projects going, including a remake of the Seventies classic Logan's Run and an Alien prequel. When it was announced in 2009 that he would instead be entrusted by Universal with 47 Ronin, a samurai epic to star Keanu Reeves, the film industry title Variety archly noted that 'it is unusual to see a first-timer entrusted to helm a film with a large budget and tentpole aspirations.' 47 Ronin was intended to be a cross between Gladiator, 300 and The Last Samurai, harnessing the star power of Reeves, the then-popular 3D format and respected Japanese actors including the future Shogun star Hiroyuki Sanada. When Rinsch was handed a $175 million budget, The Hollywood Reporter called it 'a large-scale, downright risky' gamble. According to reports, filming did not go well, not least because Rinsch insisted on shooting scenes twice, once in Japanese and once in English. Speaking to The Wrap, those involved in the production described it as a 'nightmare', and Rinsch was removed from the film's editing process, after a series of expensive reshoots were designed to make Reeves (the only A-list star in the production) more prominent. Such was the potential for embarrassment, The Wrap reported, the final post-production process was personally overseen by Universal chief Donna Langley – even as the budget ballooned to a rumoured $225 million. It was estimated that 47 Ronin would have needed to make around $500 million at the box office just to break even; in the event, it struggled to take over $150 million, making it one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. It even flopped in Japan, where local audiences were discomfited by the casting of Reeves and the undue prominence of a white, American star in what should have been their story. It received dire, bemused reviews, and although a straight-to-Netflix sequel, Blade of the 47 Ronin, was eventually released in 2022, Rinsch and Reeves were no longer involved. Usually, when a film-maker is deemed responsible for such an egregious flop, it spells the end of their career. There is a reason why the expression 'director jail' is commonly used in the industry, although, to date, only McTiernan has actually spent time in real jail. Rinsch returned to his previous career directing commercials, and under normal circumstances, he would not have been heard from again. Yet he had sufficiently impressed Reeves while the two were working together for the actor to contribute funds to a series of short films that Rinsch had developed with his Uruguayan fashion designer and model wife Gabriela Rosés, revolving around an AI-generated species named 'Organic Intelligent'. It was potentially visionary and far-reaching in its ideas and implications, and returned Rinsch to the sci-fi projects that he had wished to begin his career with. These self-funded shorts were filmed in Kenya, to avoid American labour laws, and Rinsch was a demanding presence on set, at one point filming for 24 hours straight. But when he had six short episodes ready, studios sat up and took notice. It helped that Rinsch's work coincided with the mid-2010s boom in streaming content, and there was competition between several of the biggest services, including Amazon Prime and Netflix, to take Rinsch's shorts and turn them into a big-budget series. Eventually Netflix prevailed, after Amazon believed they had reached an informal agreement, and, at the end of 2018, Rinsch and Rosés signed an enviable deal. For a 13-episode series of short films, totalling between 110 and 120 minutes in length, they would be commissioned to make the series with a cost of over $60 million, under the name Conquest or 'White House', complete with Reeves as an investor. It attracted a well-known cast, including British actress Harriet Walter, and would, had matters gone well, given Rinsch a second chance at an A-list career. He was given final cut, and he and Rosés were 'locked for life' into any sequels or spin-off opportunities. Lest we forget, this was also a time when short-form filmmaking was believed to be the future of streaming content; Jeffrey Katzenberg's now-defunct Quibi had just launched to great fanfare. Unfortunately, matters did not go well. Netflix, for unfathomable reasons, chose to ignore Rinsch's various eccentricities, which included his failing to have completed scripts for the remaining episodes. He instead suggested that he had thought up the entire story in his head, and he would communicate this information to the actors, crew and special effects department as and when it was required. It also did not help that Scott Stuber, who had recently joined Netflix's film department, had been one of the producers on 47 Ronin, and was therefore well placed to let the company know about the debacle that had ensued on that film. For unfathomable reasons he did not, and chaos ensued. Not a single further episode was completed, despite filming in locations that included Budapest, São Paulo and Montevideo. A well-sourced 2023 piece from the New York Times suggested that 'He claimed to have discovered Covid-19's secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes.' The director had to make an outright denial that he had mental health issues, saying in an Instagram post that the Times article would 'discuss the fact that I somehow lost my mind … (Spoiler alert) … I did not.' His marriage collapsed, amidst allegations that he had punched holes in walls and had accused Rosés of hiring a hitman to kill him. And Netflix, bizarrely, kept on sending Rinsch more and more money to finish the show, eventually taking their outlay to $55 million: only $6 million less than the sum originally agreed. By the time that Rosés went to the streaming company to inform them that her soon-to-be-ex husband was doing a credible impersonation of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse now, Netflix realised that they had wasted their money. They accordingly pulled the plug on the project, announcing that 'after a lot of time and effort, it became clear that Mr. Rinsch was never going to complete the project he agreed to make, and so we wrote the project off.' When they asked for the money to be returned, he refused to do so, claiming instead that the millions of dollars spent on cars and furniture were production expenses for the series, and that the money that he had made out of his investments ('Thank you and god bless crypto,' he was said to have remarked online after making $27 from the cryptocurrency Dogecoin) were a result of his financial acuity, rather than the company's misspent investment. This will now be for the courts to decide. Certainly, it seems unlikely that Conquest, White House or whatever it should have been called will ever see the light of day, and Netflix's investment, whether in whole or part, looks equally unlikely to be recovered. Nonetheless, Rinsch's arrest and indictment mean that this fascinating insight into what really goes on behind the scenes at some of the industry's biggest streaming companies – and how its unfettered talent behaves – will only become more compelling as time goes on. This Halle Berry sci-fi picture, announced as part of a multiple Netflix film deal with the actress in 2020, was completed in 2021, but was said to require 'significant' reshoots in order to render it releasable. After sitting on it until 2024, and apparently being confused by the idea that the child actors in the film would have aged, thus making these reshoots difficult, Netflix simply announced that The Mothership would be cancelled altogether. As a sweetener, Berry's film The Union, with Mark Wahlberg, was released by the streaming company last summer, to an indifferent reception. Warner Brothers' CEO David Zaslav is not one of the most popular men in Hollywood, and amidst the myriad reasons for this, his decision to scrap several of their pictures and write their cost off against tax was seen as a triumph of bean-counting over creativity. The highest-profile example of this was the already completed Batgirl, which would have starred Leslie Grace as the eponymous heroine alongside superhero veterans Michael Keaton and J.K Simmons and newly Oscar-winning Brendan Fraser as the baddie, to be directed by Bad Boys filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Described by anonymous sources as 'a huge disappointment' and cheap-looking, the decision simply to can the film altogether was still regarded as unprecedented, and a potential indicator of worrying developments to come in the industry. Nancy Meyers, esteemed director of The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give, may well be the queen of aspirationally designed Hollywood rom-coms but her planned next foray into the genre, the Michael Fassbender-Scarlett Johansson-starring Paris Paramount, was canned after the already extravagant $130 million budget – with a considerable amount already invested in pre-production - looked as if it would rise upwards to $150 million, at Meyers' behest. While it would have been intriguing to see Hollywood's most intense leading man in a light-hearted rom-com, alas we shall never get the opportunity. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The director accused of taking $55m from Netflix – and blowing it on crypto and cars
It is commonplace in Hollywood today for television series and films to be commissioned at far too large a budget for them to enjoy the success that their producers and studios hope for. Very occasionally, someone sees the light and pulls the plug on the unfinished product before it can run up even higher bills, with no chance of return. Yet the case of the director Carl Rinsch, who has been arrested for allegedly defrauding Netflix of $11 million, is something else. With the exception of Die Hard and Predator film-maker John McTiernan, who eventually ended up being imprisoned as a result of the awful behind-the-scenes shenanigans on his dire 2002 remake of Rollerball, Hollywood directors do not generally blur the line between personal liability and artistic investment. Yet Rinsch has been indicted for taking money that was intended to fund a Netflix sci-fi television series named White Horse, and instead spending on it a wide range of luxury items. The indictment has been made public, and it makes for eye-popping reading, as well as a Gatsbyian insight into how the rich – or would-be rich – live. Rinsch is said to have spent money that he received from Netflix on 'a number of extremely risky purchases of securities, including call options on a biopharmaceutical company' (which the indictment drily notes 'were not successful'), as well as significant cryptocurrency investments. Yet he didn't stint on his own personal comforts either, apparently. The indictment lists the various purchases that he made during the time that he was employed to work on the show, and they are significant. They include nearly $2 million on credit card bills, nearly $400,000 for accommodation at the Four Seasons hotel and various rental properties, 'approximately $3,787,000 on furniture and antiques, including approximately $638,000 to purchase two mattresses and approximately $295,000 on luxury bedding and linens', millions of dollars on cars, watches and clothing, and, hilariously, over $1 million on lawyers who were hired to sue Netflix for even more money. Were Rinsch an A-list director, or even someone with proven previous success, then he might have felt justified in asking for some of these extravagant luxuries. Yet his career, to date, is an undistinguished one that inadvertently shines a light on how many streaming companies are wasting vast amounts of money in pursuit of projects that may well never come to fruition, as long as some A-list star names are attached. That Rinsch had been making up fantastical stories from a young age – claiming that his father was a spy and that he grew up in Africa, whereas in fact he was the son of an insurance executive and he came of age in San Fernando Valley in California – did not bode well for what came next. The director came to prominence in 2010 when his short film The Gift, about a KGB agent delivering a mysterious present, won the Bronze Award at the Cannes Lions awards, along with the newly-created Film Craft Lion for Special Effects. This launched Rinsch, who had been directing advertisements for Mercedes and Heineken for the prestigious Ridley Scott Associates company, into the big leagues, and he was linked to some of the highest-profile projects going, including a remake of the Seventies classic Logan's Run and an Alien prequel. When it was announced in 2009 that he would instead be entrusted by Universal with 47 Ronin, a samurai epic to star Keanu Reeves, the film industry title Variety archly noted that 'it is unusual to see a first-timer entrusted to helm a film with a large budget and tent pole aspirations.' 47 Ronin was intended to be a cross between Gladiator, 300 and The Last Samurai, harnessing the star power of Reeves, the then-popular 3D format and respected Japanese actors including the future Shogun star Hiroyuki Sanada. When Rinsch was handed a $175 million budget, The Hollywood Reporter called it 'a large-scale, downright risky' gamble. According to reports, filming did not go well, not least because Rinsch insisted on shooting scenes twice, once in Japanese and once in English. Speaking to The Wrap, those involved in the production described it as a 'nightmare', and Rinsch was removed from the film's editing process, after a series of expensive reshoots were designed to make Reeves (the only A-list star in the production) more prominent. Such was the potential for embarrassment, The Wrap reported, the final post-production process was personally overseen by Universal chief Donna Langley – even as the budget ballooned to a rumoured $225 million. It was estimated that 47 Ronin would have needed to make around $500 million at the box office just to break even; in the event, it struggled to take over $150 million, making it one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. It even flopped in Japan, where local audiences were discomfited by the casting of Reeves and the undue prominence of a white, American star in what should have been their story. It received dire, bemused reviews, and although a straight-to-Netflix sequel, Blade of the 47 Ronin, was eventually released in 2022, Rinsch and Reeves were no longer involved. Usually, when a filmmaker is deemed responsible for such an egregious flop, it spells the end of their career. There is a reason why the expression 'director jail' is commonly used in the industry, although, to date, only McTiernan has actually spent time in real jail. Rinsch returned to his previous career directing commercials, and under normal circumstances, he would not have been heard from again. Yet he had sufficiently impressed Reeves while the two were working together for the actor to contribute funds to a series of short films that Rinsch had developed with his Uruguayan fashion designer and model wife Gabriela Rosés, revolving around an AI-generated species named 'Organic Intelligent'. It was potentially visionary and far-reaching in its ideas and implications, and returned Rinsch to the sci-fi projects that he had wished to begin his career with. These self-funded shorts were filmed in Kenya, to avoid American labour laws, and Rinsch was a demanding presence on set, at one point filming for 24 hours straight. But when he had six short episodes ready, studios sat up and took notice. It helped that Rinsch's work coincided with the mid-2010s boom in streaming content, and there was competition between several of the biggest services, including Amazon Prime and Netflix, to take Rinsch's shorts and turn them into a big-budget series. Eventually, Netflix prevailed, after Amazon believed they had reached an informal agreement, and, at the end of 2018, Rinsch and Rosés signed an enviable deal. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gabriela Rosés Bentancor (@gabyroses) For a 13-episode series of short films, totalling between 110 and 120 minutes in length, they would be commissioned to make the series with a cost of over $60 million, under the name Conquest or 'White House', complete with Reeves as an investor. It attracted a well-known cast, including British actress Harriet Walter, and would, had matters gone well, given Rinsch a second chance at an A-list career. He was given final cut, and he and Rosés were 'locked for life' into any sequels or spin-off opportunities. Lest we forget, this was also a time when short-form filmmaking was believed to be the future of streaming content; Jeffrey Katzenberg's now-defunct Quibi had just launched to great fanfare. Unfortunately, matters did not go well. Netflix, for unfathomable reasons, chose to ignore Rinsch's various eccentricities, which included his failing to have completed scripts for the remaining episodes. He instead suggested that he had thought up the entire story in his head, and he would communicate this information to the actors, crew and special effects department as and when it was required. Not a single further episode was completed, despite filming in locations that included Budapest, São Paulo and Montevideo. A well-sourced 2023 piece from the New York Times suggested that 'He claimed to have discovered Covid-19's secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes.' The director had to make an outright denial that he had mental health issues, saying in an Instagram post that the Times article would 'discuss the fact that I somehow lost my mind … (Spoiler alert) … I did not.' His marriage collapsed, amidst allegations that he had punched holes in walls and had accused Rosés of hiring a hitman to kill him. And Netflix, bizarrely, kept on sending Rinsch more and more money to finish the show, eventually taking their outlay to $55 million: only $6 million less than the sum originally agreed. By the time that Rosés went to the streaming company to inform them that her soon-to-be-ex husband was doing a credible impersonation of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse now, Netflix realised that they had wasted their money. They accordingly pulled the plug on the project, announcing that 'after a lot of time and effort, it became clear that Mr. Rinsch was never going to complete the project he agreed to make, and so we wrote the project off.' When they asked for the money to be returned, he refused to do so, claiming instead that the millions of dollars spent on cars and furniture were production expenses for the series, and that the money that he had made out of his investments ('Thank you and god bless crypto,' he was said to have remarked online after making $27 from the cryptocurrency Dogecoin) were a result of his financial acuity, rather than the company's misspent investment. This will now be for the courts to decide. Certainly, it seems unlikely that Conquest, White House or whatever it should have been called will ever see the light of day, and Netflix's investment, whether in whole or part, looks equally unlikely to be recovered. Nonetheless, Rinsch's arrest and indictment mean that this fascinating insight into what really goes on behind the scenes at some of the industry's biggest streaming companies – and how its unfettered talent behaves – will only become more compelling as time goes on. The streaming films we'll never see The Mothership This Halle Berry sci-fi picture, announced as part of a multiple Netflix film deal with the actress in 2020, was completed in 2021, but was said to require 'significant' reshoots in order to render it releasable. After sitting on it until 2024, and apparently being confused by the idea that the child actors in the film would have aged, thus making these reshoots difficult, Netflix simply announced that The Mothership would be cancelled altogether. As a sweetener, Berry's film The Union, with Mark Wahlberg, was released by the streaming company last summer, to an indifferent reception. Batgirl Warner Brothers' CEO David Zaslav is not one of the most popular men in Hollywood, and amidst the myriad reasons for this, his decision to scrap several of their pictures and write their cost off against tax was seen as a triumph of bean-counting over creativity. The highest-profile example of this was the already completed Batgirl, which would have starred Leslie Grace as the eponymous heroine alongside superhero veterans Michael Keaton and J.K Simmons and newly Oscar-winning Brendan Fraser as the baddie, to be directed by Bad Boys filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Described by anonymous sources as 'a huge disappointment' and cheap-looking, the decision simply to can the film altogether was still regarded as unprecedented, and a potential indicator of worrying developments to come in the industry. Paris Paramount Nancy Meyers, esteemed director of The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give, may well be the queen of aspirationally designed Hollywood rom-coms but her planned next foray into the genre, the Michael Fassbender-Scarlett Johansson-starring Paris Paramount, was canned after the already extravagant $130 million budget – with a considerable amount already invested in pre-production – looked as if it would rise upwards to $150 million, at Meyers' behest. While it would have been intriguing to see Hollywood's most intense leading man in a light-hearted rom-com, alas we shall never get the opportunity.
