We’ve covered a number of lawsuits in the entertainment industry here on Nerdbot. One that comes to mind that has been ongoing for a few years now involves Warner Bros. Discovery alleging Paramount is in violation of its contract regarding new “South Park” episodes. It’s a complicated mess but has millions of dollars at stake, illustrating how impactful these lawsuits can be. And while this latest lawsuit involving Netflix doesn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, it is one of the more bizarre cases we’ve come across.
The saga begins with director Carl Rinsch and his 2013 flop, an adaptation of the Japanese story “47 Ronin.” The film went overbudget and underperformed at the box office. In 2017, Rinsch tried to get another project, “White Horse,” made. Later renamed to “Conquest,” the series was supposed to be about artificial beings turning against their creators. Rinsch had tried to feature this plot in a series of short episodes that he hoped would be enough to attract investments and a distributor.
Enter Netflix, and an infusion of $11 million to make the project happen and bring it to their platform. Surely this was going to help bring this project to light and finish those episodes and turn them into a full-fledged series; except that didn’t happen at all. Instead of putting the money into the show, Rinsch allegedly used the money for a variety of things that included luxury goods and personal expenses. Some of those expenses included investments in cryptocurrency, which is where this story takes an even more bizarre twist.
Apparently Rinsch ultimately proved successful in those investments, and made around $27 million off of the Netflix funding. Then, he took some of those funds and used them to sue Netflix, arguing they owed him an additional $14 million in funds. An arbitrator didn’t agree with this, and ruled it was actually Rinsch that owed Netflix $9 million.
Also, now Rinsch is being charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes to the tune of possibly 90 years in prison.
If you were wondering how many episodes of “Conquest” were completed, the answer is zero. Netflix says Rinsch didn’t meet specific production deadlines that were given to him, and they pulled their financial support in March of 2021. Filming DID take place, and you can see some of the photos from production in this New York Times feature about Rinsch. If “47 Ronin” is any indication of the potential quality of what “White Horse/Conquest” was going to be, we doubt we’re missing much.
