Whipped Cream Difficulties

Another interesting story by way of Hacker News:

Carl Erik Rinsch is a director. He has one feature length credit in IMDB: “47 Ronin”, the Keanu Reeves movie. It apparently did not do well, and he allegedly fought with the producers.

However, in 2018, Neflix signed a deal with him to produce a SF series called “White Horse” (later “Conquest”). They’ve put $55 million into the series.

And they have nothing to show for it.

Soon after he signed the contract, Mr. Rinsch’s behavior grew erratic, according to members of the show’s cast and crew, texts and emails reviewed by The New York Times, and court filings in a divorce case brought by his wife. He claimed to have discovered Covid-19’s secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes. He gambled a large chunk of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies. He spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing.

…

Mr. Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab and, using options, placed risky bets on the stock market, according to copies of his bank and brokerage statements included in the divorce case. One of his wagers was that shares of the biotech firm Gilead Sciences, which had announced that it was testing an antiviral drug on Covid patients, would soar. Another was that the S&P 500 index, which had already declined more than 30 percent, would fall further. Mr. Rinsch lost $5.9 million in a matter of weeks.

Relevant to Lawrence‘s interests:

Mr. Rinsch had begun using what remained of the $11 million that Netflix had wired his production company to place bets on crypto. He transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin, a dog-themed cryptocurrency, according to an account statement reviewed by The Times. Unlike his stock market investments, this one paid off: When he liquidated his Dogecoin positions in May 2021, he had a balance of nearly $27 million.

(Non-archive NYT link. You may be able to read this if you use incognito mode.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023 at 12:17 pm and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.