According to this site[0], their revenue for 2022 was $31.6B, so $55M would be approximately 0.17%. Stated otherwise, on average, they make $55M every 15 hours or so. So yeah, it kind of seems like a rounding error.
It's still around 180k of premium subscribers at 25$ per month for a year, not taking into account traffic costs. It's not nothing, it's lost cash and lost opportunity.
Well in this case Netflix is defending against a case in arbitration that they owe the guy an extra $14 million. Sure seems like they signed a very stupid contract.
Losing the money to a crazy director who gambled it away is at least better than actually finishing the series but never releasing it to get tax write-offs (looking at you Max).
This isn't how tax write-offs work. The expenditures in the production of a film or TV series are always deducted from taxable net income regardless of whether the final product is released or not.
There are a plethora of reasons not to release a creative work. For example, you don't want to spend any more money on music licensing, editing, marketing, etc, that is unlikely to be recouped.
You really shouldn't take fake news organizations like CNN seriously on issues like this. They obviously didn't do even basic fact checking with a real tax accountant or lawyer.
I know this is derailing the main thread, but then why are studios choosing not to release finished movies on streaming? It seems like they could recoup at least some of the expenses compared to just shelving the thing forever.
Certain expenses will be capitalized while the film is available for release/streaming. Depreciation/amortization will be years for the life of the film. But if you scrap it right away, you can deduct those expenses immediately.
Yes, but the reason to do this is that the film is ultimately going to cost more money than it is worth, or the gross represents a rounding error on the studio's balance sheet.
You wouldn't capitalize the expenses of a film that was expected to recoup any meaningful amount of money on release. Either the thing is already costing you more money than it is worth or is a brand risk, thus you look for a way to get out as painlessly as possible.
If the film was going to recoup at least the $10-$20M they'll save in taxes that FY they would release it.
The point is the property is worth negative or trivial value already. Either it's going to cost more to finish than it's worth, or it's worth next to nothing.
> For example, you don't want to spend any more money on music licensing, editing, marketing, etc, that is unlikely to be recouped.
I have no idea what "Max" is in the GP, but another big reason to not release a creative work is if audience feedback was negative enough that even releasing it for free would hit the value of your brand.
It is though, I definitely had project not-launched which had expenses that accountants found much harder to justify then launched projects. Taxes isn't a hard science but a soft one, and when talking to a tax officer, as far as my limited knowledge goes, launching a product or movie does help to ease their fraud suspicions.
So many stories like this recently. Coyote vs Acme drama is so interesting as well. I bet the movie industry will become as crazy as the world of casinos
Very different situation. For Coyote vs Acme, the movie was finished properly and the only issue was WB projected it would make more money as a tax write-off. There was no malfeasance from the director/producer/etc.
For this one... well, read the article. The director/producer did some crazy stuff with the money.
It is not possible to make more money as a tax write-off. That's not how corporate income taxes work. The expense of making a movie can always be written off regardless of whether it is released or. If the studio decided not to release it then that was done for other reasons.
Bullshit. You can't write off "lost profits". The US corporate income tax code contains no such provision. Don't believe anything you read in the entertainment press, it's mostly fake news or at least not fact checked. Go ask your own income tax accountant if you don't believe me.
Ok, well then why didn't they release the movie? Why did they say it would be more profitable to not release it? You're either smarter than the entirety of Warner Brother's finance department, or wrong.
This is not a matter of who is smarter. The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
If the studio decided not to release the movie it was most likely because the expected marketing and distribution costs exceeded the expected revenue. Or maybe they didn't want a crap movie to damage the long term brand of a valuable character that they plan to leverage in other products.
> The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true. The law is a series of gray areas at best. You can have three accountants do your taxes and get three results, because each applies different interpretations to the laws. And going in front of a judge won't get extra clarity -- three judges would give you three different opinions.
> If the studio decided not to release the movie it was most likely because the expected marketing and distribution costs exceeded the expected revenue.
Maybe, but it tested better with test audiences than any other movie they release this year, so that's highly unlikely. Also, they specifically said they were doing it for the write down.
There are some gray areas in the tax code, but this isn't one of them. You write off your basis in a capital loss. There's no legal justification for writing off "lost profits". Trying to do so would just be tax fraud.
Even if that were a thing, the fact that it would cost more to release it than not shows that the profit value is negative.
>> The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
> Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true.
The point being referred to here is that you can't take a deduction for profits you would have made in some hypothetical world where things had worked out better for you. It's not all gray areas, and this particular point is entirely un-gray. Nor does the article that you "tl;dr"'ed into this quip support you here. It just says that the studio decided not to risk any further losses.
Because it was gonna bomb, and make less money than it would cost to market. It really is that simple. Warner/Discovery is mega-cash strapped right now. They may literally value $100m now more than $200m a year from now, as they have a massive debt to service.
Possibly because Zaslav, the new boss, hates cartoons (not hyperbole, he's said things to that effect himself) and that colored any judgment on the release of the film.
I hate Hallmark holiday movies (I don’t, but let’s be hypothetical for a second — i.e. not real), but if that were a way to make profits and I was the Hallmark CEO I would be releasing them daily during holiday season. It seems a little silly to think that the boss Zaslav would forego profit because he personally “hates cartoons.”
That is true, but nobody knows for sure how much a movie will make. Generally you know the more you invest into advertising the more people will want to see it, but how much return exactly every dollar spent on advertising will generate won’t be known beforehand.
The job of studio executives is to estimate this, and based on that make choices. This is based on some amount of objectiveish data (such as market research and comparative trends) but also has a large component of guesswork. And this guesswork is where his personal preferences can colour his decision making.
In other words if he would know it will make a lot of money he would release it for sure. You are right on that. But it is not known, and perhaps the objective indicators are ambigous or borderline, that is where his personal preferences might make a difference.
Usually cash flow is the benefit, and perhaps a tax-year thing. Better to realize your losses next to your gains. Because if you can realize losses on profits you can estimate, you should start a startup that does this for LLCs.
Using the correct accounting method (value based method) the value of an asset (the movie) includes its future profit value. If you then choose not to release the movie, the future profit goes to 0, and you can write off the loss of the asset value.
What basis do you have for that method? Your basis for capital losses is the amount you put into it. If you're writing it off, the value of the asset is by definition zero. The only way you could write off based on the value would be if you already paid capital gains on the value.
While I do think it is unlikely that you can deduct “lost profits” by not releasing film, there are some interesting ways expenses of a film can be depreciated. See this form:
It is the only thing on the IRS website I could find about this and it does not tell the whole picture of the special depreciation method for films. The fact that this form can have you pay interest to the IRS if you incorrectly predict income reinforces the idea that you can’t deduct “lost profits”.
A failed film generates a write-off whether or not it's released. If released, then the losses (and associated write-offs) are taken over the course of several years, since many of the costs of the movie are treated as capitalized costs that get expensed over time.
If the movie is not released, then the expenses can get written off all at once. Due to the way financial accounting works (e.g. time value of money) an immediate deduction is more valuable than a deduction over time. In this case, the value would have been from offsetting profits from Barbie. It's a small savings, only about 6m in reduced taxes (on an approximate 30m writedown, taking into account that WB did not fully finance the film itself and so losses would be shared with the other investors), for an effective loss to WB of 24m.
Based on the 2x Budget principle (marketing and distribution combined are generally the same as the production budget), with a 70m production budget, Coyote vs Acme was expected to make significantly less than 140m gross if released. Given that they were willing to completely write off the film, this means they were expecting a total box office gross of significantly less than $115 million.
Slightly unrelated, but there is a 19 hour fan-edit of the Hobbit + Lord of the Rings -- i.e someone glued all 3 Hobbit movies and all 3 LotR movies into a 19 hour video.
"people copied our cool effects for Matrix 1, what if we make the action scenes so long and expensive no one would even bother to copy them because they all went home before they were over?"
In the "2-3 hours of the hobbit which was good" are you including the animated versions as well? I'd be hard pressed to find 2-3 hours from the travesty that Jackson made
Different person, but just about everything. It simply wasn't enjoyable, at all. I'm just talking about the first hobbit, I have somehow managed to purge the memory of seeing the others from my memory.
I liked the LotR adaptations, though there were a few things I was pretty disappointed with.
But when it came to the Hobbit films it was a different story entirely, I saw the first and didn't love it. I saw the second and actively disliked it, so I figured I'd save myself the pain and haven't seen the third and I have no intention of watching it.
It's a shame that it was badly rushed, and split (needlessly) into three parts. But despite the close association it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the LotR films, which I rewatch every few years.
With all of the creative licensing that was taken with the content, I was really hoping that the Hobbit would have reduced the camp and gave it different tone to match the rest of the "universe". Instead, we got 20 minutes of dwarves throwing plates around and singing songs that does nothing except show examples of how the thinnest book was turned into 3 friggin' movies.
That's just one of the issues I had, but they don't get any nicer from there
Even in LOTR there are some wobbly sections outside the big story beats, when you re-watch it now. It's a good book to film adaptation of difficult material though.
You probably want the "Maple Edit" of the Hobbit (also known as "J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit"). It is 247 minutes and is setup as a single film with intermissions.
I wouldn't mind sitting in a screening of Dune pt1 followed by Dune pt2 when it comes out. Sounds like something Alamo would do. While not 10-14 hours, I would be willing to sit in the theater for 4-5 hours.
AMC by me did all 3 LOTR films in 3 nights just before the hobbit came out. I enjoyed it a lot but by god by the time the 3rd movie ended I was done, and then I still had to sit through another 45 minutes of endings.
SciFi did a miniseries, just before or just after they changed their name. It wasn't bad. I think it was about 10 hours.
The problem is that a lot of the payoff is at the end of book 3, and then book four tips the whole thing upside down with some deep religious and philosophical elements that I'm not sure everyone is ready for.
I'm always a little surprised how few people have read Dune relative to Lord of the Rings, but the more I think about Dune the more I get it.
>with some deep religious and philosophical elements that I'm not sure everyone is ready for.
This is how I felt about Battlestar. I barely remember watching the original series as a kid, but I just remember a couple of character names, Cylons (which I thought were cool), the space ships, and the human in the dark room ontop of the pyramid shape the Cylons talked to. That was it. Then I watched the reboot, and was shocked by the religious overtones. Clearly, I never researched anything about it until that point, and then it all made sense.
I'm nervous about Buck Rogers (biddybiddup, what's up Buck!) might turn out the same way on a reboot.
Religious overtones or are ancient religious texts the original sci-fi where its adherents a few generations removed never got the memo? Only kinda joking. I too picked up on battlestar, resurrection, the twelve tribes (or colonies?) lords ok Kobol and so on. I think someone told me at some point the original was Mormons in space.
The original show's creator, Glen Larson, was a Mormon - so it tracks that the show incorporated a lot of that theology. Also, one of the main antagonists is Count Iblis, someone who seeks to lead the colonists to follow him, though he is revealed to be essentially a prince of darkness. "Iblis" is the Islamic name for Satan, so another religious element. Even his backstory is similar to the Abrahamic view of the devil, "he [Count Iblis] was previously a Being of Light who fell from grace after using his powers for evil purposes."
Ron Moore's reimagined version of Battlestar includes strong themes of reincarnation and life being a cycle, which also tracks with Moore's past interest in Hinduism and other Eastern religions.
You can never reboot Max "perhaps you should execute their trainer" von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. Melody Anderson. Queen soundtrack. A true masterpiece.
I don't understand all the love for Dune. I read it, it was ok, and that was it. 3 underwhelming film adaptations is more than enough.
Special effects don't make a movie anymore. What matters is plot (and music). For example, "Colossus the Forbin Project" is very good. Some other very good scifi movies:
There’s so much good dialog in Aliens that I’m always amazed was written in the mid 80s and would play just as well if it were new today (mostly spoken by Hudson): “Game over, man!”, “yeah, but it’s a dry heat”, “ Somebody said "alien" she thought they said ‘illegal alien’ and signed up!”
Aliens is more of a vanilla monster movie than scifi. I don't recall any science in it, other than the setting.
Alien was based on a short story in "Voyage of the Space Beagle", though the implementation of it was fresh. The discovery and exploration of the alien's life cycle was good scifi.
Science fiction doesn’t imply science being in it.
>fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.
Aliens isn't much more than NYC with monsters in the sewers, with a different backdrop. It was ok and I didn't feel like it was a waste of time, but that's about it.
Can't agree with you there. I think even Cameron would be the first to say that Aliens is primarily a thrill ride. But it is also objectively true that at least two hard scifi elements provide the scaffolding for the events of the movie.
Two of the most central themes of the movie were fairly hard sci-fi... although admittedly one of them was nearly entirely deleted from the theatrical cut.
One: What would a person experience after decades of hibernation? In many ways the film revolves around or is set in motion by Ripley's extended cryosleep after Alien. She is now alone in a strange world where her skills are no longer relevant or current. This primes her for manipulation by Burke. She has also missed out on her deceased daughter's entire life, which primes her to think of Newt as a surrogate daughter and protect her with a mother's ferocity. (Unfortunately, the exposition about her daughter was removed from the theatrical cut. Huge miss.)
Two: How would mankind react to alien contact? Would we treat it with ontological reverence or would it be business as usual for warmongering corporations? The second half of the movie is set in motion by Burke doing the latter on behalf of Weyland-Yutani.
The terraforming stuff.... yeah I agree it's just a setting.
You do raise some good points. I never thought those issues were the central theme of the movie - just a setup for, for lack of a better term, a bug hunt.
Agreed, the dialog had some good laughs. When Paxton asks Gomez "did anyone ever think you were a man?" and she replied "no, did anyone think that of you?" A comeback worthy of Winston Churchill.
I don't know if that bit of dialogue was in the original script, but it is pretty much the story of how the actress Jenette Goldstein went to audition for the movie - she thought it would be about immigrants (she was one herself, an American in the UK).
I enjoy Aliens—it's the bigger, more over-the-top production of the two.
But I prefer Alien for its intimacy and slowly growing horror. John Hurt's character's arc stunned me as a child, and is still one of my favorite turns of storytelling. I love the set design and overall tone of the movie. It's a different space mood than other space movies. And it nails that feeling of being hunted on a spaceship (so far as I would know).
> I don't understand all the love for Dune. I read it, it was ok, and that was it. 3 underwhelming film adaptations is more than enough.
It's the Count of Monte Cristo meets Star Wars, with great world building, pretty good plot and characters and a lot of interesting philosophy, sociology, strategy and tactics. What's not to love?
The scifi miniseries was decent. The 1984 one was...barely Dune, though I enjoyed it. The current one is the first really good adaptation IMO, I don't think it's overrepresented at all.
Kinda strange considering its movie that turned him away from making big movies. He hates the final version, was not allowed to the cutting room and the studio basically tried to make very different much more pop shorter vision with material Lynch shot.
I think there are still rumors about him having/making directors cut that could happen. That would surely be very dofferent movie.
I agree so much. The new dune is expertly made but it washed of so much of the trippy stuff from books. Even the aesthetics are playing it on the very safe side.
Then again this is the directors style. It would be probably end up worse if they would bend too much out of their comfort zone.
You should read the count of monte cristo, it’s in an entirely different league in terms of writing compared to Dune. The philosophy is transparent, the tactics and strategy are basically nonexistent, and the sociology is missing any kind of coherence.
It’s a cargo cult. Dune itself is pretty standard sci-fi. The sequels are where it goes from good to great. People deify the first one because they think that’s where the great reputation comes from, not understanding that the really interesting stuff is in the later books. I mean, the giant worm-man, the endless clones experiencing existential dread, and the trans stuff all come after book 2 and really after book 3.
I've only read the series once, >20 years ago, but I thought the opposite. To me it started out good but ended weird and stupid (I admit I remember almost no details though, so can only give the impression I'm left with). I've read other books I thought much better than any of them though.
I couldn't make it after the second book, Dune Messiah. But I enjoyed the games, especially the RTS, the miniseries and the recent movie which is quite good.
Not GP, but I think I made it to about 20 pages into the third book before giving up. I actually enjoyed the first book, but it just got more ponderous as it went on. And this was around the same time I read the Foundation series by Asimov, so I didn't necessarily need at pot-boiler.
I'm not sure if one of us misunderstood "pot-boiler" but Dune is surely no popcorn entertainment. It felt ponderous because its author invests much time into the development of characters, philosophy and politics. It's not for everybody, but it surely is not a pot-boiler.
These are great sequels, but they are Hollywood action movies compared to their predecessors. I do prefer ESB, but Star Wars has better structure and a more satisfying ending, so it is close.
The best thing about ALien is that when it came out, you had no idea who the "hero" was in the crew. Tom Skerritt was the biggest star, had first billing, and was the white male captain. There was no expectation the someone else would be the hero and survivor.
Star Wars: I saw it the day after it was released. It was groundbreaking in every way. Nobody had seen anything like it before. It just blew everybody away. ESB just did not have the impact SW did.
T1 was very focused. Again, nobody had seen anything like it before. The terminator stayed true to form in its relentless purpose, summed up in Reese's little speech. T2 rehashed the same plot, adding an asperger sidekick robot for comic relief. (I thought Harlan Ellison was way off base claiming that T1 was stolen from him.)
And you have to let everybody know just how bad you think Dune is, in the most snarky and belittling way possible. Seriously, every reply of yours on this entire topic is combative.
Have you considered what your agenda here is, and whether you’re participating in this discussion in good faith?
Oof, looks like I touched a nerve. I’m providing a measured response to the unexamined breathless enthusiasm for mediocre writing. I’ve had to talk lots of people into reading a second sci-fi series because they started with Dune and decided that the genre isn’t worth it.
Dune is fine. But people need to re-read it as adults or something before extolling it’s virtues from the rooftops as they do in this thread.
You should consider that you feeling attacked is as much about you as it is about me.
I’m not feeling attacked, and didn’t say I was. I'm just sorry for the folks you’re responding to.
Edit to clarify: for the precise reason that “you have terrible taste” is ad hominem, and contributes nothing to the discussion. This isn’t appreciated on HN.
I think if you worked on your delivery you might find folks have different reception to your ideas.
I might give your words some weight if it wasn’t for the great big pile of upvotes on my comments. I like that reception just fine, but thanks I guess?
If they have an issue they are welcome to raise it, no need to go white knighting people.
There are some fun themes in there and I appreciate that it begins as a somewhat typical "hero's journey" tale and then turns that whole idea inside out. I like the intrigue and plotting and how various factions are always plotting several steps ahead.
But none of that is why I absolutely love Dune (the novel). For me it just has this vibe that I've never been able to explain.
Maybe that's why I like it: because I can't even figure out why I like it.
Anyway, that's all crazy subjective and I can easily see why many are not enchanted by it.
It was supposed to be an acting vehicle for a football player. It's so camp.
But it also has Max von Sydow in it, and Brian Blessed is every bit as over the top as he is in season 1 of Black Adder.
It occupies much the same genre as Big Trouble in Little China and the Evil Dead movies. If you're looking for something deep, you're in the wrong place.
I'm not sure I understand why you find those lines particularly comedic. Campy? Most definitely. They also don't really work out of context, so I sat down and watched the actual scene and well... they're still not a particularly funny line, and I don't think the scene is meant to be funny. Are you suggesting that they're intentionally hamming it up? Honestly, I can't even tell if this point.
Wikipedia seems to support this theory as well:
"Lorenzo Semple Jr. wrote the script. He later recalled:
Dino wanted to make Flash Gordon humorous. At the time, I thought that was a possible way to go, but, in hindsight, I realize it was a terrible mistake. We kept fiddling around with the script, trying to decide whether to be funny or realistic. That was a catastrophic thing to do, with so much money involved... I never thought the character of Flash in the script was particularly good. But there was no pressure to make it any better. Dino had a vision of a comic-strip character treated in a comic style. That was silly, because Flash Gordon was never intended to be funny. The entire film got way out of control."
It seems like the kind of show that would fit well in mystery science theater though. This is likely just one of those things that is more of a time capsule, or a period piece, it's likely very difficult for people who grew up watching this type of show to be able to objectively have an opinion about it without nostalgia creeping in.
Personally, I can't fathom thinking the 1980s Flash Gordon was a good movie while the 1980s Dune movie was not.
While Dune can certainly stand on its own as a great work, it's best appreciated as a critical response to the utopic techno-determinism of Asimov's Foundation series. The discourse between these two series contains some of the most interesting ideas ever penned in science fiction. I think you'd need to read at least the first three Foundation books and the first four Dune books to get a handle on it, but this is a good primer: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch05.html
All of those are popcorn. Even Alien - which is a jump scare creature feature expanded with some token politics and superb horror aesthetics. And Star Wars, which is a fantasy for ten year olds in space (according to George Lucas), but with ground-breaking special effects.
Dune - the book - is not popcorn. The series is probably the most brutally surgical examination of power, politics, religion, and economics ever to appear in print.
There are giant worms and weird drugs and such, but they're all metaphors.
If you're looking for the literary equivalent of CGI, that's very much not what it's about.
IMO Dune needs to be a tv show that likely runs several seasons so all the world and backstory can be explored properly so the audience can get a full experience.
Think The Wire in terms of plot discovery and forwarding (leaves out bogus exposition, means you have to pay attention to get things etc that moves along at a good pace and has forward development each episode.
It would be expensive, but it’s the only way I can imagine Dune being done to its fullest extent on screen
The problem is that nobody wants to acquire Dune to be a critical success. It needs to be a commercial success.
This of course implies the addition of much lazier exposition than The Wire, which IIRC never had more than about 4 million viewers. I'm sure it's different in the streaming era, but more and more, audiences are making it clear that they are definitely not tuning in to shows that require thought.
Eventually special effects will become so easy to do well that a cheaply produced Dune will capture all its facets. Although you'll still need a good writer to make it compelling.
I would say the opposite. The first book is good, but pretty typical sci-fi fantasy fare. The next books are what really fleshes out a really interesting concept, this universe where humanity is far more advanced than today in a humanist way instead of technologically.
They also help make the point of the first book clear - that Paul wasn't a hero, but a tyrant. This is easily lost in the first book because of the comparison with the Harkonen and the previous Emperor, and because we're used to rooting for the main character. But Herbert's point wasn't to further the myth of the philosopher king, but to dismantle it - which is quite rare in fiction, and made extremely clear throughout the series.
I'd also say that the exploration of Leto II's psychology in the God Emperor of Dune was the most interesting writing in the series, so that's what I'd consider the pretty clear high point.
If anything streaming makes shows like The Wire more accessible and viable as commercial successes. It's hard to keep details in your head when the show airs an episode once a week, and if you're tuning in for the first time you've got no idea what's going on and find something else to watch. Neither of those issues he to exists with streaming, although more and more they're switching back to an episode a week model, but rewatching episodes in between weekly releases is an option now at least.
We are still in the early days of figuring out what works.
One issue: media execs don't know anything except "that was profitable, so let's do it again". Have you noticed that Netflix now has fifty cooking shows, split between one-shot game shows and tournaments/"reality" dramas? "Iron Chef" worked and "Top Chef" worked, so they get cloned and slightly modified. All of these sink.
For a long-form SF/F show, what hasn't been done?
- two 1 hour chapters weekly
- dropping 2-4 1 hour chapters at a time, rather than either single episodes or the whole season
- irregularly sized episodes matching the plot
- six episodes of rising tension, a flashback episode to explain backstory, and then a finale that begs for a second season (just kidding, Netflix seems to think that's optimal already)
This is the one I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure why the MCU or Star Wars aren't doing more of this. They've kind of figured out how do to different sized plots (Daredevil vs. Avengers, Rogue Squadron) but why aren't they more connected? Why aren't they doing more multimodal storytelling. Have a big blockbuster movie, a 90 minute heist movie, a prestige tv season about politics, one about the military. Have some books about complicated stuff, a video game about the actiony parts, tiktok and instagram as storytelling devices instead of martech, etc.
SciFi did a fairly good job, with two 3-part miniseries.
They show their age, but the acting was great, and they did a fairly decent job of honoring the spirit of the books.
Swapping Alice Kriege for Saskia Reeves (as Jessica) was a bit jarring, but, at least, they both looked old enough to be Paul's mother (as opposed to his sister).
James McAvoy did a great job. It was probably one of his earlier leading roles.
in retrospect the ark was in trouble, perhaps the AI was applying the emotive context in response to questions that are a misdirection of effort, considering the situation.
Occasionally, they are aided (or hindered) in their travels by the ship's frustrating and only partially-functioning computer system interface, known as Mu Lambda 165 (portrayed by William Osler, who also provided the opening narration for each episode).
Reminds me of the outrage over the $100M budget of Water World and how it barely got made. Today, a $100M budget is nothing. We've already had several $300M budget films this year.
Wikipedia says The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction described the show as "dire" and The Best of Science Fiction TV included the show on its list of "Worst Science Fiction Shows of All Time”. But the full episodes are available on YouTube, so as a fan of 70s sci-fi, I’ll decide for myself. :)
It had some talent behind the writing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison. For the first few episodes it seemed legit and to be going somewhere, but lost its way at some point. Production values were always quite low, but not that much different from Dr. Who from the same period.
I rate it as worthwhile from a sci fi archeology perspective, but not good in any traditional sense.
In the same sense as a startup founder is the one with the money who hires people. Usually it’s somebody else’s money who is keeping a distance, and the producer/founder is making decisions on how to use it.
Since we're discussing the economics of film/TV studios, and their weird decisions. I'd like to understand why the studios are still making Star Trek shows. Each one seems to be more poorly received than the last. That's costing studios far more than $55M. Picard alone cost ~$9M per episode according to Wikipedia.
Eventually, you get one right, right? Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Plus, there are so many Trekkies that will watch anything regardless of how bad it is just so they can bitch about it after watching it. They still had to watch it though, and that's about all that matters to the analytics.
It is strange they can fail so bad, since Star Trek is essentially a setup to make any story at all each episode. I mean, McFarlains comedy-as-an-excuse Not-Star Trek Star Trek is so much more Star Trek than the new series ... at a way lower budget. Imagine if they gave him the job instead.
I know, right? To me the essential Star Trek formula - at least of TOS, TNG and Voyager - is simply to have a team of competent professionals encounter all kinds of weird and wacky creatures and anomalies, and then to resolve those encounters in a peaceful way. It's a sci-fi anthology show that emphasizes the experience of scientists, engineers and diplomats over warriors, outlaws and extremists. One of the reasons I think new Trek fails is because even when they try to make it more episodic (SNW), the characters lack the idealism that makes the show different. The Orville, on the other hand, gets it exactly right.
That said, there is a case to be made that Star Trek is now more than just TOS/TNG/Voyager, and it already was that after DS9. So I don't begrudge fans of the dark, morally gray, against-a-backdrop-of-war stories getting to see more of that in new Trek. At least the animated shows (Lower Decks and Prodigy) keep the optimistic spirit of Starfleet alive, so there's something for everyone.
I would say Enterprise fits into the good guy optimism spirit? I was quite young when I saw it so dunno really. Saw it first for some reason, 10 years before half TOS, TNG and Voyager.
>It is strange they can fail so bad, since Star Trek is essentially a setup to make any story at all each episode.
The early slash fiction writers (almost all women) in the 1970s more or less viewed the science fiction elements like the Enterpise and the Federation as distractions, and got Kirk/Spock away from them as soon as the could to focus on their relationship. In other words, they were inspired by the close, John Ford-like camaderie between the two characters (or, if you choose to believe so, saw the clear sexual subtext below their heterosexual veneers) and used it as a springboard to tell the stories they really wanted to tell.
Star Trek shows last for decades as revenue generators through syndication, streaming, merchandising, novels, movies, theme park events, and etcetera. A new series may draw people in, many of whom will stay to watch the older series.
Now that the series are basically only available on streaming through CBS/Paramount I don't know what syndication gains are being made, but I'd guess a huge percentage of the CBS/Paramount streaming subscribers are staying subscribers for the huge Star Trek library. It's an anecdote but the last time I quit Netflix was when they lost Star Trek and I realized I was basically only hanging on for Star Trek episodes (after about a year and a half I resubscribed for other content).
Paramount+ took a few swings at this, and eventually they hit paydirt with Strange New Worlds.
The intention isn’t to make mediocre shows. The intention is to make a show which draws an audience, and Star Trek shows start with a decent base audience to make it worth trying.
> Each one seems to be more poorly received than the last.
Only to a certain subset of "fans" who have made hating Star Trek a part of their identity politics, and a grift on Youtube. They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted.
In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.
> made hating Star Trek a part of their identity politics...
...The only reason anyone could dislike modern Star Trek: Because they want to </s>. No, I actually want to like the new Star Trek. I just found that to be prohibitively difficult.
> They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted.
Except that it wasn't. It feels like a modern Marvel film masquerading as Star Trek. With sassy Mary Sue characters that just quip back and forth sarcastically. The dialogue is honestly terrible.
> In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.
On Rotten Tomatoes Picard has an audience score of 57%. Discovery has 37%. About what I expected. Strange New Worlds is doing well though. I'm not upset that other people like it. I'd consider giving SNW another go, but I won't waste any more time with Picard or Discovery.
So I assume Netflix sued him for breach of contract? It doesn't seem like the world was deprived of any art except for whatever production wasn't greenlit because this guy was too busy making line go up to actually do his job.
Heh, sounds like the next big Netflix white collar crime hit will be self-referential then. Will they reuse their Streamberry alter ego from Black Mirror or appear as Netflix proper?
> [Rinsch] transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin, a dog-themed cryptocurrency.
Guy sounds like a dummy
> 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.
Around 2021, Dogecoin was a very interesting short term investment, yeah. Everyone was high off of AMC and GME in the stock market, so people were actively investing and day trading. Elon Musk was talking up Dogecoin, keeping in mind this is when he was still very popular in a positive way, and crypto in general was doing really well around that time. I'm not sure that it's wise to throw money into it now though. Crypto has become a very polarizing topic with people, with a vocal group of people that absolutely hate it (some of whom have no idea what they're talking about, but there are absolutely genuine reasons to dislike it as it's implemented today), and it has a somewhat uncertain future with government agencies reigning in on it (which certainly needs to happen for it to have a future too, but governments today seem more content with pulverizing the tech into the mud than see it grow into itself while keeping it fairly regulated.)
> Crypto has become a very polarizing topic with people...
Certain people. I was involved from the beginning, and most of the OGs just shrug at the present day noise - the convert zeal being long exhausted by all the complaints about how PoW makes Mother Gaia cry. The people who have a crazy level of investment are the tech journalists that took very public positions badmouthing bitcoin. That is probably also true of anyone else who can't resist calculating how much their mistake cost them when they compared bitcoin to beanie babies at $150.
> ...which certainly needs to happen for it to have a future too, but governments...
Firing first in a duel, global economy style - that is why the foot dragging has been so protracted.
It's not quite the beginning but I bought Bitcoin anonymously using cash from Mt Gox in the rally up to $15 before it crashed back down to $5, and then ignored my wallet until it added many zeroes before I sold.
I still think that, as a concept, it's dumb as shit, even thought it was profitable for me. I just got lucky.
Huh, everything about what you said seems off to me.
How did you anonymously fund your account at Mt Gox? Because I only remember them taking bank wires. I don't remember them ever having any kind of payment provider that would have accepted anything like pre-paid Visa cards, and in any case: by the time btc was at $15 - there was only one money transmitter (that wasn't a bank) allowing btc related transactions. I know this because I was debanked by two banks and had my paypal account suspended around that time.
How did you come to learn about bitcoin, this "dumb as shit" concept? Buying drugs on Silk Road? Because most of the early people came to it from reading the white paper after seeing it posted on the cipherpunk mailing list, or on a board discussing Austrian-economics/anarcho-capitalism... for those people it was a political act - not an investment (as you seem to view it).
> How did you anonymously fund your account at Mt Gox? Because I only remember them taking bank wires.
Here in Japan you can make domestic wires anonymously using cash at an ATM (since it's such a cash-based society), and since Mt Gox was based in Japan you could fund your account with a domestic wire transfer
> How did you come to learn about bitcoin, this "dumb as shit" concept
Probably on IRC? I can't recall. It was still early enough that I got like 0.001 btc from one of those "btc faucets". It was fun when it was just this distributed tech demo, before people took it so seriously. The technology is cool.
What's dumb as shit is the idea of basing the future of finance on it.
Well you definitely have a very abnormal way of coming to it. I've encountered people who came to it for the pure love of technology - but they usually gravitate towards one of the shitcoins because they actually harbor a bit of greed and feel they "missed the boat".
> What's dumb as shit is the idea of basing the future of finance on it.
As I said, I burned through my convert zeal a long time ago... but your situation does have me curious. Do you have any formal experience with the backends making up the global financial system? Because I do, and it blows my mind that anyone trusts it at all. The US has, in recent years, proven itself to be such an awful steward of the global reserve currency that it is at the point now where multiple militarily weak states are openly discussing replacing the petrodollar with something else. A few years ago that would have resulted in a coincidental horrific end for them, but after the naked weaponization of the international financial system against Iran and then Russia... well the end is very near. All that is to say that it is now clear that everyone now knows a fiat currency controlled by a single interest makes a poor global reserve. Combine that with the likely future in which software agents need to directly handle money in order to pay their own bills... and meatspace money won't work, because humans are thieves with access to fraudulent chargebacks. What alternative could there be besides a crypto currency? I'm not saying it will be bitcoin, because there have already been several fedcoin lead balloons floated, but bitcoin has thrived in an incredibly non-permissive environment (economic, technological and political) for a long time now.
> I still think that, as a concept, it's dumb as shit, even thought it was profitable for me. I just got lucky.
What, specifically, do you find dumb as shit? I don't want to come across as confrontational here, but it's difficult to gauge how much a person knows about blockchain, its uses, current pitfalls, and the technology's mission. And these conversations usually end up in one of two ways for me depending upon how much the person on the other end actually knows. Either they know next to nothing besides how to buy and sell it, in which case, the conversation almost always tends to lean into pointless vitriol; or they actually know a lot about the current crypto industry, see it for all its weaknesses and none of the potential, and are willing to have a civil conversation.
Frankly, like the other user, I'm in the boat of thinking that our current financial system is in desperate need of some kind of overhaul. Blockchain/crypto could be a part of that overhaul, but doesn't necessarily have to be. But it's clear to me that something needs to change.
Anyway, I'm just always curious about other people's thoughts. I'd say the majority of people I talk to on this topic though just jump straight to abusing the person that's pro-blockchain-as-a-concept without having substantial reason for disliking it besides:
1) it's a huge waste of the world's non-renewable energy resources, which is not necessarily true, it's mostly only true for blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW, there are blockchains that require substantially fewer resources to be a player on the chain.
2) That crypto prices fluctuate too much when cashing back out to fiat. This argument seems short-sighted, because in a possibly ideal situation you would never need to liquidate to a fiat. In an possible future (for blockchain) you would be able to pay for your morning coffee at a PoS terminal using your crypto wallet directly and there's possibly a government system that lays out the purchasing power of a coin. I use the word "possibly" a lot here to point out that there are probably competing theories on ideal implementations of crypto as a general and worldwide currency.
3) That the transactions per second (TPS) that a blockchain can handle aren't comparable to systems like VISA. That seems true, for now. Blockchain is still very much in the early stages of development, culturally and technologically. Keep in mind, fiat currencies have been around for nearly a millennia. A technical solution to replace an ancient system needs engineering time and public adoption.
If you have other reasons for thinking blockchain/cryptocurrency is dumb as shit, I'm very interested. And genuinely, I'm not being sardonic or anything else when I say that.
It has been a long time since I last debated this stuff, so it is funny to see the same talking points from 10 years ago.
1) PoW is the only way that is actually decentralized. If you want decentralized power over the currency - PoS will never work on a long time horizon, because you'd need some way of representing stake that is just impossible. As far as the whole "waste" complaint: relative to what? I've never seen a comparative study that included the entirety of the existing financial system. The academic papers I have seen complaining about bitcoin were full of comically bad errors: using geolocation to try and pin mining operations to nearest power plants, estimating hashes per watt based on FPGA or first gen ASIC miners, etc.
2) Bitcoin volatility has been going down every year, which makes sense given wider participation. Volatility is obviously different from price.
3) Bitcoin has had the capability for offchain transactions a long time now - using smart contracts with onchain settlement, so this really isn't a real concern any longer.
> 1) PoW is the only way that is actually decentralized. If you want decentralized power over the currency - PoS will never work on a long time horizon
There are proof systems that are not truly Proof of Work and are also not Proof of Stake. But sure, you're not wrong that proof of stake is not truly decentralized. Anyway, suffice to say I was not talking about Proof of Stake.
But you do bring up some thoughts that I've had previously, with regards to the energy waste in comparison to exactly what. Thanks for reminding me of it.
> There are proof systems that are not truly Proof of Work and are also not Proof of Stake.
Got any examples in mind? Because the only stuff that I can think of besides the two are convoluted Rube Goldberg methods of concealing what is actually PoS. Take any one of the goofy token based protein folding style coins as an example. Unless you are thinking of some kind of premined fedcoin, which is closer to a giftcard than a cryptocurrency.
I'll refrain from talking too much about it, as I'm actually somewhat associated with the project, so take that as a disclaimer. But the first example that comes to mind is Chia's Proof of Space (and Time) which requires some amount of initial computationally expensive work to be performed to create what is essentially your hashes on disk, and then your farm (their verbiage for "mine") can be ran off of external hard drives connected to a Raspberry Pi.
Anyway, I'll forgive you for maybe not knowing about it, as it's a much smaller and newer project than the likes of Bitcoin or Ethereum. It's a nice project to point out though, as you don't need to be a whale to be a player and sign blocks. I just run about 24 terabytes of plotted out space on spare drives that I had laying around that I rotated out of my Plex server. I still get a win every now and again, but my cost to get going was extremely minimal.
There's a lot of FUD spread around about Chia chewing through SSDs for the initial work portion, which is maybe somewhat true? I used a couple of SSDs to generate my plots that I now use for video game storage that are perfectly healthy, so my advice to people spreading that FUD would be to use higher quality SSDs that are rated for high TBW (terabytes-written.)
Ah, yeah I'm familiar with it - a PoW scheme, where the work is memory cell wear. I feel for anyone who missed the incredibly short period of time where bitcoin gpu mining pools were anything but distributed space heaters... but I don't see a future in trying to chase that dragon. At least it isn't a mindless hardfork cash grab, or an unintentional joke like that time that communist redditors came out with a coin that would randomly delete balances at rest.
Or more Electric Dreams! Great production value Philip K Dick short stories.
I haven't actually watched Altered Carbon but I have a trail of Takeshi Kovacs characters in various mmos and games, and am in general a Richard K Morgan fan. I loved Altered Carbon series. His recent-er Thirteen was fun imaginative Mars stuff. Market Forces is old old old & has a lot of mediocre aspects, but I loved the Car Wars style setting & corporate mercenary treatment.
That show butchered the original stories, though. And for some reason they picked some Dick's earliest and least interesting 1950s pulp-era stories, rather than the later, more mature. Autofac is the only classic that stands out, and the adaptation is both atrocious and unfaithful to the story.
Why not "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts", "Second Variety", "Impostor", "Faith of Our Fathers", "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon", "Colony" or "Foster, You're Dead"? I wonder if it's because someone owns the rights? Some of these have already been adapted, though never faithfully.
In fact, a faithful adaptation of a PKD story or novel has never been made. Which is odd, for two reasons. One, PKD wrote quite filmable stories, with excellent dialogue and well-paced plots that should not pose a problem for anyone trying to adapt them to screen.
And secondly, why would you change anything? You adapt PKD because of the idea and how brilliantly it unfolds to its conclusion; if you replace that with your own spin, it's no longer PKD. Blade Runner very much lacks the feel of a PKD story, for example (no absurdist humour, no existential angst, no color; everything is just drab and dreary, which is a property that plagued some of his mainstream writings but very few of his SF works; if BR feels like anything it's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, which is a sad and bleak book).
The books where also very different from each other, but with much superior result. Give them a try, if you want part of the fun of the first season. But the first season of the Netflix show is still muy preferred approach to this universe.
Same, I was pleasantly surprised by the first season and thought it was really good. Season 2 felt like a totally different show and was pretty much a generic bad action show.
I rewatch it once a year or so. I haven't caved yet and read the books. But I still hope for a 3rd season even though it is probably never going to happen
A show which cost $55M, not necessarily one which is worth $55M. The article gives me the impression that those funds weren't spent responsibly; for all we know, this could be the sci-fi version of The Room.
The first story in this class that I read was Empires of the Deep - really amazed me on two fronts.
First, the way the economics of these endeavours are so flawed that even the most passionate creatives / sponsors can't viably get the finished or near-finished product out to paying customers.
Second, that this stuff doesn't get leaked more often - especially recent examples. Wikipedia also has a running list of abandoned films, though it looks to be US / Euro-centric. [1]
I'm afraid it won't happen because there has been so many movies out there which were inspired by it. It could never live up to its visual and mood simulacra.
Also, after they've killed The Peripheral before it actually got interesting, I don't think there is even interest in the plot out there.
In a quick google search it seems that supposedly there's a ongoing project on Neuromancer, although not much info is divulged.
But I agree with you: it would be EXTREMELLY difficult to live up to the book anyhow. Nevertheless, I think it will happen eventually: the book is incredible.
> Netflix executives grew so concerned with Mr. Rinsch’s behavior that they consulted with the Los Angeles Police Department’s threat management unit, a person with knowledge of the matter said. A Police Department psychologist reviewed Mr. Rinsch’s texts and emails and concluded that he didn’t seem like a threat to himself or others.
Were executives concerned about possible risks to people, or were they trying to use (misuse?) the police to establish the conditions for a contract clause or insurance policy?
Rinsch sounded from other assertions in the article like he was having some kind of mental health and/or substance challenges. But I don't understand the uncritical acceptance of this bit by the journalist.
Granted innocent until proven guilty, but I wouldn’t hedge my bets on anyone from Hollywood being a paragon of moral justice oppressed by the powers that be, unless you want a nasty cut from Occam’s razor later on that week
Especially given the rest of the behavior detailed in the article, which as always, no one ever reads
>Were executives concerned about possible risks to people, or were they trying to use (misuse?) the police to establish the conditions for a contract clause or insurance policy?
this kind of just seems like the system work as intended. if you are thinking you need to call the police to perform a wellness check on somebody just for the purposes of covering your own ass, you're probably justified in calling for a wellness check.
The threshold for someone to be unwillingly forced to undergo a psych evaluation is rightfully rather high. Not being carted away certainly doesn’t mean that doing that kind of check isn’t justified.
> A correction was made on Nov. 22, 2023 : An earlier version of this article misstated the status of Carl Erik Rinsch’s series when Netflix bought the rights to it. There was a script, but it was not complete."
'is not complete' can mean many things.
Also Netflix initially planned more than one season, but then they backtracked when the script was extending beyond the first season - there seems to be a gap in the narrative of the article.
> Netflix gave Mr. Rinsch final cut, a privilege it had previously bestowed on only a few directors. And it assured Mr. Rinsch and Ms. Rosés that they would remain “locked for life” to all subsequent seasons and spinoffs
vs
> Mr. Rinsch had missed several production milestones and was toggling between two versions of the script, a shorter one that matched the original 13-episode plan and one twice as long that would have required greenlighting a second season.
Also 'missed several production milestones' is a bit vague. That year we had Corona, which would naturally lead to some sort of delays.
>Also Netflix initially planned more than one season
No they didn't. The article is pretty clear that they only greenlit one season. That 'locked for life' quote is saying that if Netflix decided to buy more seasons and/or spinoffs, Rinsch was guaranteed involvement, aka Netflix couldn't just fire and replace him (like NBC did to Dan Harmon on Community for example).
> Rinsch sounded from other assertions in the article like he was having some kind of mental health and/or substance challenges. But I don't understand the uncritical acceptance of this bit by the journalist.
Presumably that was one of the "detailed questions" that he "declined to respond" to.
Sorry, but what's the actual corporate structure here?
For software companies, investments are nominal in the sense that they come with responsible CFO's, budgeting and reporting structures that would prevent the money from being vacuumed into personal accounts for investment gambling.
Is it really the case that a Netflix would just wire $11M based on a promise? Or that they would tolerate the kind of hostaging that insists on building v2 before delivering v1?
I assumed that anyone in any field disbursing $1M+ contracts has provisions for monitoring, bad faith, etc. (and clawing back misappropriated fund). But not here?
They foucus on the dollar amount, but the startup graveyard of software companies who raised $50M or more by their series A or B that nobody will have heard of seems much larger. Movies and series seem pretty low risk by comparison.
A movie studio and a venture fund seem to have similar economics.
A single Netflix show does not have the potential to end up with multi-billion dollar per-year recurring revenues. The potential upside on a startup is far far large.
In addition, there are no low-risk startups. There are, however, relatively low risk films and TV shows to be made.
Because the money is gone without anything to show for it, after (allegedly) spending lots of it on... not TV show stuff. You don't see a problem with that? Did we read the same article?
I don't know about you, but if someone gave me $55m to make a TV show, I'd like to think I wouldn't blow $6m of that betting on the stock market. If even one of these allegations are true (and honestly I don't really see a reason to doubt them), this is a hilariously brazen misappropriation of funds.
Obviously we haven't seen the contract/deal he signed with Netflix, but I highly doubt it has language like "you can spend this money we're giving you on literally anything you want, including /r/WallStreetBets behavior".
> I don't know about you, but if someone gave me $55m to make a TV show, I'd like to think I wouldn't blow $6m of that betting on the stock market.
The article does claim he lost that, but then claims he made more back.
It claims Netflix transferred him $11M, he tried played markets and lost then speculated crypto and more than doubled the money, then bought toys, and was still up:
Netflix wired Mr. Rinsch’s production company $11 million... Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab... lost $5.9 million in a matter of weeks [then later] transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin ... this one paid off: ... a balance of nearly $27 million...
At this point, he's up. Then the spending spree "tab came to $8.7 million", but that still leaves more than the $11M.
But did it? Netflix probably wanted to make more money on this, and wanted to get audience growth. They have people they can absolutely use this to do this all by themselves, but they didn’t because that wasn’t what they wanted to do.
This is a long story that can be summarized as "Carl Rinsch is going to jail". The feds will charge and convict him of wire fraud and possibly other offences. But wire fraud is so broad it easily applies in this situation.
Failing to deliver on a project because of cost overruns, reshoots, whatever is one thing. Buying cars, "investing" in crypto and otherwise using the funds for purposes not reasonably defined within the contract is fraud, plain and simple.
365 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 324 ms ] threadDefinitely not small amounts of money, but relatively speaking…
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272545/annual-revenue-of...
$ 16.7 B in 2022.
So, 0,33 %
It would be like someone shoplifting $100 of stuff from a corner store.
There are a plethora of reasons not to release a creative work. For example, you don't want to spend any more money on music licensing, editing, marketing, etc, that is unlikely to be recouped.
"Tax write-offs" simply isn't one of them
https://deadline.com/2023/01/as-tv-turns-to-tax-write-offs-t...
Also, this isn't a debate. The US tax code isn't something that's decided by CW showrunners.
A) Not as finished as being represented by media, and the costs associated with finishing them exceed the likely value of the finished product
B) The studio views the finished product as being of marginal value and damaging to their brand
You wouldn't capitalize the expenses of a film that was expected to recoup any meaningful amount of money on release. Either the thing is already costing you more money than it is worth or is a brand risk, thus you look for a way to get out as painlessly as possible.
The point is the property is worth negative or trivial value already. Either it's going to cost more to finish than it's worth, or it's worth next to nothing.
I have no idea what "Max" is in the GP, but another big reason to not release a creative work is if audience feedback was negative enough that even releasing it for free would hit the value of your brand.
HBO Max, a streaming service.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp
For this one... well, read the article. The director/producer did some crazy stuff with the money.
tl;dr: If they never release it they can write off the "lost profits" which they can't do if they release or sell it.
If the studio decided not to release the movie it was most likely because the expected marketing and distribution costs exceeded the expected revenue. Or maybe they didn't want a crap movie to damage the long term brand of a valuable character that they plan to leverage in other products.
Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true. The law is a series of gray areas at best. You can have three accountants do your taxes and get three results, because each applies different interpretations to the laws. And going in front of a judge won't get extra clarity -- three judges would give you three different opinions.
> If the studio decided not to release the movie it was most likely because the expected marketing and distribution costs exceeded the expected revenue.
Maybe, but it tested better with test audiences than any other movie they release this year, so that's highly unlikely. Also, they specifically said they were doing it for the write down.
It’s all gray areas. See my sibling comment about how to write off future profits.
Even if that were a thing, the fact that it would cost more to release it than not shows that the profit value is negative.
> Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true.
The point being referred to here is that you can't take a deduction for profits you would have made in some hypothetical world where things had worked out better for you. It's not all gray areas, and this particular point is entirely un-gray. Nor does the article that you "tl;dr"'ed into this quip support you here. It just says that the studio decided not to risk any further losses.
The job of studio executives is to estimate this, and based on that make choices. This is based on some amount of objectiveish data (such as market research and comparative trends) but also has a large component of guesswork. And this guesswork is where his personal preferences can colour his decision making.
In other words if he would know it will make a lot of money he would release it for sure. You are right on that. But it is not known, and perhaps the objective indicators are ambigous or borderline, that is where his personal preferences might make a difference.
https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8866
It is the only thing on the IRS website I could find about this and it does not tell the whole picture of the special depreciation method for films. The fact that this form can have you pay interest to the IRS if you incorrectly predict income reinforces the idea that you can’t deduct “lost profits”.
If the movie is not released, then the expenses can get written off all at once. Due to the way financial accounting works (e.g. time value of money) an immediate deduction is more valuable than a deduction over time. In this case, the value would have been from offsetting profits from Barbie. It's a small savings, only about 6m in reduced taxes (on an approximate 30m writedown, taking into account that WB did not fully finance the film itself and so losses would be shared with the other investors), for an effective loss to WB of 24m.
Based on the 2x Budget principle (marketing and distribution combined are generally the same as the production budget), with a 70m production budget, Coyote vs Acme was expected to make significantly less than 140m gross if released. Given that they were willing to completely write off the film, this means they were expecting a total box office gross of significantly less than $115 million.
On the topic of disasters, I recommend reading about The Starlost:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune
My wife would probably head to her sister's for the weekend.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fanedits/comments/bo8how/middle_ear...
But when it came to the Hobbit films it was a different story entirely, I saw the first and didn't love it. I saw the second and actively disliked it, so I figured I'd save myself the pain and haven't seen the third and I have no intention of watching it.
It's a shame that it was badly rushed, and split (needlessly) into three parts. But despite the close association it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the LotR films, which I rewatch every few years.
That's just one of the issues I had, but they don't get any nicer from there
I passed on The Hobbit.
Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85gVFD7Dqwk
Info:
http://www.maple-films.com/jrr-tolkiens-the-hobbit/the-final...
(Best movies ever)
The problem is that a lot of the payoff is at the end of book 3, and then book four tips the whole thing upside down with some deep religious and philosophical elements that I'm not sure everyone is ready for.
I'm always a little surprised how few people have read Dune relative to Lord of the Rings, but the more I think about Dune the more I get it.
This is how I felt about Battlestar. I barely remember watching the original series as a kid, but I just remember a couple of character names, Cylons (which I thought were cool), the space ships, and the human in the dark room ontop of the pyramid shape the Cylons talked to. That was it. Then I watched the reboot, and was shocked by the religious overtones. Clearly, I never researched anything about it until that point, and then it all made sense.
I'm nervous about Buck Rogers (biddybiddup, what's up Buck!) might turn out the same way on a reboot.
Ron Moore's reimagined version of Battlestar includes strong themes of reincarnation and life being a cycle, which also tracks with Moore's past interest in Hinduism and other Eastern religions.
Buck Rogers was not religious. It was pure episodic adventure. The TV series has nothing on the (or any) Buster Crabbe serial from the 30s.
Special effects don't make a movie anymore. What matters is plot (and music). For example, "Colossus the Forbin Project" is very good. Some other very good scifi movies:
. Invaders from Mars
. Flash Gordon (1980)
. Terminator
. Star Wars IV
. Alien
It came out the same time as 2001, and was eclipsed and forgotten.
Best line: "5 years of Caltech in 5 minutes!"
Colossus, although released in 1969, is particularly relevant today.
Alien was based on a short story in "Voyage of the Space Beagle", though the implementation of it was fresh. The discovery and exploration of the alien's life cycle was good scifi.
>fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.
I definitely expect more from scifi to be scifi.
Two of the most central themes of the movie were fairly hard sci-fi... although admittedly one of them was nearly entirely deleted from the theatrical cut.
One: What would a person experience after decades of hibernation? In many ways the film revolves around or is set in motion by Ripley's extended cryosleep after Alien. She is now alone in a strange world where her skills are no longer relevant or current. This primes her for manipulation by Burke. She has also missed out on her deceased daughter's entire life, which primes her to think of Newt as a surrogate daughter and protect her with a mother's ferocity. (Unfortunately, the exposition about her daughter was removed from the theatrical cut. Huge miss.)
Two: How would mankind react to alien contact? Would we treat it with ontological reverence or would it be business as usual for warmongering corporations? The second half of the movie is set in motion by Burke doing the latter on behalf of Weyland-Yutani.
The terraforming stuff.... yeah I agree it's just a setting.
But I prefer Alien for its intimacy and slowly growing horror. John Hurt's character's arc stunned me as a child, and is still one of my favorite turns of storytelling. I love the set design and overall tone of the movie. It's a different space mood than other space movies. And it nails that feeling of being hunted on a spaceship (so far as I would know).
It's the Count of Monte Cristo meets Star Wars, with great world building, pretty good plot and characters and a lot of interesting philosophy, sociology, strategy and tactics. What's not to love?
The scifi miniseries was decent. The 1984 one was...barely Dune, though I enjoyed it. The current one is the first really good adaptation IMO, I don't think it's overrepresented at all.
I actually credit the 1984 Dune with turning me on to Lynch.
I think there are still rumors about him having/making directors cut that could happen. That would surely be very dofferent movie.
Then again this is the directors style. It would be probably end up worse if they would bend too much out of their comfort zone.
Dune isn't as bad as you imply IMO. To each their own though. It probably helped that I read Dune for the first time when I was young.
However, considering what you recommend, I doubt it would be something you'd enjoy.
I was only talking about the books written by Frank Herbert btw.
I haven't seen the other two, bet I'll just assume they also have better sequels.
These are great sequels, but they are Hollywood action movies compared to their predecessors. I do prefer ESB, but Star Wars has better structure and a more satisfying ending, so it is close.
The best thing about ALien is that when it came out, you had no idea who the "hero" was in the crew. Tom Skerritt was the biggest star, had first billing, and was the white male captain. There was no expectation the someone else would be the hero and survivor.
T1 was very focused. Again, nobody had seen anything like it before. The terminator stayed true to form in its relentless purpose, summed up in Reese's little speech. T2 rehashed the same plot, adding an asperger sidekick robot for comic relief. (I thought Harlan Ellison was way off base claiming that T1 was stolen from him.)
Have you considered what your agenda here is, and whether you’re participating in this discussion in good faith?
Dune is fine. But people need to re-read it as adults or something before extolling it’s virtues from the rooftops as they do in this thread.
You should consider that you feeling attacked is as much about you as it is about me.
Edit to clarify: for the precise reason that “you have terrible taste” is ad hominem, and contributes nothing to the discussion. This isn’t appreciated on HN.
I think if you worked on your delivery you might find folks have different reception to your ideas.
If they have an issue they are welcome to raise it, no need to go white knighting people.
But I know a lost cause when I see one, and you live by comparison. Wish you the best with that.
But none of that is why I absolutely love Dune (the novel). For me it just has this vibe that I've never been able to explain.
Maybe that's why I like it: because I can't even figure out why I like it.
Anyway, that's all crazy subjective and I can easily see why many are not enchanted by it.
. The Man from Earth
No special effects, no action, just talk. A great movie.
It has not gone well for me. I think it's just our special little thing.
The usual criticism is it's too over the top, too campy. But they miss the point - it was supposed to be over the top and campy.
The dialog is still funny after 40+ years:
The movie is just crammed with gems like that. It should have won an Oscar for best screenplay.But it also has Max von Sydow in it, and Brian Blessed is every bit as over the top as he is in season 1 of Black Adder.
It occupies much the same genre as Big Trouble in Little China and the Evil Dead movies. If you're looking for something deep, you're in the wrong place.
The complete ridiculousness is Flash plays it deadpan straight with all the emotion of two by four, while everyone else goes berserk.
It's a turnabout from such things as a Groucho Marx movie, where Groucho has all the funny lines and everyone else plays it straight.
Wikipedia seems to support this theory as well:
"Lorenzo Semple Jr. wrote the script. He later recalled:
Dino wanted to make Flash Gordon humorous. At the time, I thought that was a possible way to go, but, in hindsight, I realize it was a terrible mistake. We kept fiddling around with the script, trying to decide whether to be funny or realistic. That was a catastrophic thing to do, with so much money involved... I never thought the character of Flash in the script was particularly good. But there was no pressure to make it any better. Dino had a vision of a comic-strip character treated in a comic style. That was silly, because Flash Gordon was never intended to be funny. The entire film got way out of control."
It seems like the kind of show that would fit well in mystery science theater though. This is likely just one of those things that is more of a time capsule, or a period piece, it's likely very difficult for people who grew up watching this type of show to be able to objectively have an opinion about it without nostalgia creeping in.
Personally, I can't fathom thinking the 1980s Flash Gordon was a good movie while the 1980s Dune movie was not.
Oh, absolutely. They're making fun of the inherent silliness of the Flash Gordon serials.
Another gem is the priest at the wedding:
And here we find a rare ray of hope for humanity. People realizing that just because something is old doesn’t automatically make it a classic.
Dune is in many ways antithesis of Foundation. And in makes sense being written after it.
Dune - the book - is not popcorn. The series is probably the most brutally surgical examination of power, politics, religion, and economics ever to appear in print.
There are giant worms and weird drugs and such, but they're all metaphors.
If you're looking for the literary equivalent of CGI, that's very much not what it's about.
Think The Wire in terms of plot discovery and forwarding (leaves out bogus exposition, means you have to pay attention to get things etc that moves along at a good pace and has forward development each episode.
It would be expensive, but it’s the only way I can imagine Dune being done to its fullest extent on screen
This of course implies the addition of much lazier exposition than The Wire, which IIRC never had more than about 4 million viewers. I'm sure it's different in the streaming era, but more and more, audiences are making it clear that they are definitely not tuning in to shows that require thought.
They also help make the point of the first book clear - that Paul wasn't a hero, but a tyrant. This is easily lost in the first book because of the comparison with the Harkonen and the previous Emperor, and because we're used to rooting for the main character. But Herbert's point wasn't to further the myth of the philosopher king, but to dismantle it - which is quite rare in fiction, and made extremely clear throughout the series.
I'd also say that the exploration of Leto II's psychology in the God Emperor of Dune was the most interesting writing in the series, so that's what I'd consider the pretty clear high point.
One issue: media execs don't know anything except "that was profitable, so let's do it again". Have you noticed that Netflix now has fifty cooking shows, split between one-shot game shows and tournaments/"reality" dramas? "Iron Chef" worked and "Top Chef" worked, so they get cloned and slightly modified. All of these sink.
For a long-form SF/F show, what hasn't been done?
- two 1 hour chapters weekly
- dropping 2-4 1 hour chapters at a time, rather than either single episodes or the whole season
- irregularly sized episodes matching the plot
- six episodes of rising tension, a flashback episode to explain backstory, and then a finale that begs for a second season (just kidding, Netflix seems to think that's optimal already)
This is the one I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure why the MCU or Star Wars aren't doing more of this. They've kind of figured out how do to different sized plots (Daredevil vs. Avengers, Rogue Squadron) but why aren't they more connected? Why aren't they doing more multimodal storytelling. Have a big blockbuster movie, a 90 minute heist movie, a prestige tv season about politics, one about the military. Have some books about complicated stuff, a video game about the actiony parts, tiktok and instagram as storytelling devices instead of martech, etc.
They show their age, but the acting was great, and they did a fairly decent job of honoring the spirit of the books.
Swapping Alice Kriege for Saskia Reeves (as Jessica) was a bit jarring, but, at least, they both looked old enough to be Paul's mother (as opposed to his sister).
James McAvoy did a great job. It was probably one of his earlier leading roles.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069638/mediaviewer/rm194734796...
Occasionally, they are aided (or hindered) in their travels by the ship's frustrating and only partially-functioning computer system interface, known as Mu Lambda 165 (portrayed by William Osler, who also provided the opening narration for each episode).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost
final paragraph of the premise
Hollywood can be so crazy sometimes.
I rate it as worthwhile from a sci fi archeology perspective, but not good in any traditional sense.
That said, there is a case to be made that Star Trek is now more than just TOS/TNG/Voyager, and it already was that after DS9. So I don't begrudge fans of the dark, morally gray, against-a-backdrop-of-war stories getting to see more of that in new Trek. At least the animated shows (Lower Decks and Prodigy) keep the optimistic spirit of Starfleet alive, so there's something for everyone.
DS9 ... was odd in the spirit regard.
The early slash fiction writers (almost all women) in the 1970s more or less viewed the science fiction elements like the Enterpise and the Federation as distractions, and got Kirk/Spock away from them as soon as the could to focus on their relationship. In other words, they were inspired by the close, John Ford-like camaderie between the two characters (or, if you choose to believe so, saw the clear sexual subtext below their heterosexual veneers) and used it as a springboard to tell the stories they really wanted to tell.
Now that the series are basically only available on streaming through CBS/Paramount I don't know what syndication gains are being made, but I'd guess a huge percentage of the CBS/Paramount streaming subscribers are staying subscribers for the huge Star Trek library. It's an anecdote but the last time I quit Netflix was when they lost Star Trek and I realized I was basically only hanging on for Star Trek episodes (after about a year and a half I resubscribed for other content).
The intention isn’t to make mediocre shows. The intention is to make a show which draws an audience, and Star Trek shows start with a decent base audience to make it worth trying.
Discovery did not work for me in the same way despite me usually liking those less episodic plotlines.
Only to a certain subset of "fans" who have made hating Star Trek a part of their identity politics, and a grift on Youtube. They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted.
In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.
...The only reason anyone could dislike modern Star Trek: Because they want to </s>. No, I actually want to like the new Star Trek. I just found that to be prohibitively difficult.
> They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted.
Except that it wasn't. It feels like a modern Marvel film masquerading as Star Trek. With sassy Mary Sue characters that just quip back and forth sarcastically. The dialogue is honestly terrible.
> In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.
On Rotten Tomatoes Picard has an audience score of 57%. Discovery has 37%. About what I expected. Strange New Worlds is doing well though. I'm not upset that other people like it. I'd consider giving SNW another go, but I won't waste any more time with Picard or Discovery.
(It's all in the article!)
> [Rinsch] transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin, a dog-themed cryptocurrency.
Guy sounds like a dummy
> 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.
Shit, maybe I'm the dummy?
Certain people. I was involved from the beginning, and most of the OGs just shrug at the present day noise - the convert zeal being long exhausted by all the complaints about how PoW makes Mother Gaia cry. The people who have a crazy level of investment are the tech journalists that took very public positions badmouthing bitcoin. That is probably also true of anyone else who can't resist calculating how much their mistake cost them when they compared bitcoin to beanie babies at $150.
> ...which certainly needs to happen for it to have a future too, but governments...
Firing first in a duel, global economy style - that is why the foot dragging has been so protracted.
I still think that, as a concept, it's dumb as shit, even thought it was profitable for me. I just got lucky.
How did you anonymously fund your account at Mt Gox? Because I only remember them taking bank wires. I don't remember them ever having any kind of payment provider that would have accepted anything like pre-paid Visa cards, and in any case: by the time btc was at $15 - there was only one money transmitter (that wasn't a bank) allowing btc related transactions. I know this because I was debanked by two banks and had my paypal account suspended around that time.
How did you come to learn about bitcoin, this "dumb as shit" concept? Buying drugs on Silk Road? Because most of the early people came to it from reading the white paper after seeing it posted on the cipherpunk mailing list, or on a board discussing Austrian-economics/anarcho-capitalism... for those people it was a political act - not an investment (as you seem to view it).
Here in Japan you can make domestic wires anonymously using cash at an ATM (since it's such a cash-based society), and since Mt Gox was based in Japan you could fund your account with a domestic wire transfer
> How did you come to learn about bitcoin, this "dumb as shit" concept
Probably on IRC? I can't recall. It was still early enough that I got like 0.001 btc from one of those "btc faucets". It was fun when it was just this distributed tech demo, before people took it so seriously. The technology is cool.
What's dumb as shit is the idea of basing the future of finance on it.
> What's dumb as shit is the idea of basing the future of finance on it.
As I said, I burned through my convert zeal a long time ago... but your situation does have me curious. Do you have any formal experience with the backends making up the global financial system? Because I do, and it blows my mind that anyone trusts it at all. The US has, in recent years, proven itself to be such an awful steward of the global reserve currency that it is at the point now where multiple militarily weak states are openly discussing replacing the petrodollar with something else. A few years ago that would have resulted in a coincidental horrific end for them, but after the naked weaponization of the international financial system against Iran and then Russia... well the end is very near. All that is to say that it is now clear that everyone now knows a fiat currency controlled by a single interest makes a poor global reserve. Combine that with the likely future in which software agents need to directly handle money in order to pay their own bills... and meatspace money won't work, because humans are thieves with access to fraudulent chargebacks. What alternative could there be besides a crypto currency? I'm not saying it will be bitcoin, because there have already been several fedcoin lead balloons floated, but bitcoin has thrived in an incredibly non-permissive environment (economic, technological and political) for a long time now.
What, specifically, do you find dumb as shit? I don't want to come across as confrontational here, but it's difficult to gauge how much a person knows about blockchain, its uses, current pitfalls, and the technology's mission. And these conversations usually end up in one of two ways for me depending upon how much the person on the other end actually knows. Either they know next to nothing besides how to buy and sell it, in which case, the conversation almost always tends to lean into pointless vitriol; or they actually know a lot about the current crypto industry, see it for all its weaknesses and none of the potential, and are willing to have a civil conversation.
Frankly, like the other user, I'm in the boat of thinking that our current financial system is in desperate need of some kind of overhaul. Blockchain/crypto could be a part of that overhaul, but doesn't necessarily have to be. But it's clear to me that something needs to change.
Anyway, I'm just always curious about other people's thoughts. I'd say the majority of people I talk to on this topic though just jump straight to abusing the person that's pro-blockchain-as-a-concept without having substantial reason for disliking it besides:
1) it's a huge waste of the world's non-renewable energy resources, which is not necessarily true, it's mostly only true for blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW, there are blockchains that require substantially fewer resources to be a player on the chain.
2) That crypto prices fluctuate too much when cashing back out to fiat. This argument seems short-sighted, because in a possibly ideal situation you would never need to liquidate to a fiat. In an possible future (for blockchain) you would be able to pay for your morning coffee at a PoS terminal using your crypto wallet directly and there's possibly a government system that lays out the purchasing power of a coin. I use the word "possibly" a lot here to point out that there are probably competing theories on ideal implementations of crypto as a general and worldwide currency.
3) That the transactions per second (TPS) that a blockchain can handle aren't comparable to systems like VISA. That seems true, for now. Blockchain is still very much in the early stages of development, culturally and technologically. Keep in mind, fiat currencies have been around for nearly a millennia. A technical solution to replace an ancient system needs engineering time and public adoption.
If you have other reasons for thinking blockchain/cryptocurrency is dumb as shit, I'm very interested. And genuinely, I'm not being sardonic or anything else when I say that.
1) PoW is the only way that is actually decentralized. If you want decentralized power over the currency - PoS will never work on a long time horizon, because you'd need some way of representing stake that is just impossible. As far as the whole "waste" complaint: relative to what? I've never seen a comparative study that included the entirety of the existing financial system. The academic papers I have seen complaining about bitcoin were full of comically bad errors: using geolocation to try and pin mining operations to nearest power plants, estimating hashes per watt based on FPGA or first gen ASIC miners, etc.
2) Bitcoin volatility has been going down every year, which makes sense given wider participation. Volatility is obviously different from price.
3) Bitcoin has had the capability for offchain transactions a long time now - using smart contracts with onchain settlement, so this really isn't a real concern any longer.
There are proof systems that are not truly Proof of Work and are also not Proof of Stake. But sure, you're not wrong that proof of stake is not truly decentralized. Anyway, suffice to say I was not talking about Proof of Stake.
But you do bring up some thoughts that I've had previously, with regards to the energy waste in comparison to exactly what. Thanks for reminding me of it.
Got any examples in mind? Because the only stuff that I can think of besides the two are convoluted Rube Goldberg methods of concealing what is actually PoS. Take any one of the goofy token based protein folding style coins as an example. Unless you are thinking of some kind of premined fedcoin, which is closer to a giftcard than a cryptocurrency.
Anyway, I'll forgive you for maybe not knowing about it, as it's a much smaller and newer project than the likes of Bitcoin or Ethereum. It's a nice project to point out though, as you don't need to be a whale to be a player and sign blocks. I just run about 24 terabytes of plotted out space on spare drives that I had laying around that I rotated out of my Plex server. I still get a win every now and again, but my cost to get going was extremely minimal.
There's a lot of FUD spread around about Chia chewing through SSDs for the initial work portion, which is maybe somewhat true? I used a couple of SSDs to generate my plots that I now use for video game storage that are perfectly healthy, so my advice to people spreading that FUD would be to use higher quality SSDs that are rated for high TBW (terabytes-written.)
I haven't actually watched Altered Carbon but I have a trail of Takeshi Kovacs characters in various mmos and games, and am in general a Richard K Morgan fan. I loved Altered Carbon series. His recent-er Thirteen was fun imaginative Mars stuff. Market Forces is old old old & has a lot of mediocre aspects, but I loved the Car Wars style setting & corporate mercenary treatment.
Why not "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts", "Second Variety", "Impostor", "Faith of Our Fathers", "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon", "Colony" or "Foster, You're Dead"? I wonder if it's because someone owns the rights? Some of these have already been adapted, though never faithfully.
In fact, a faithful adaptation of a PKD story or novel has never been made. Which is odd, for two reasons. One, PKD wrote quite filmable stories, with excellent dialogue and well-paced plots that should not pose a problem for anyone trying to adapt them to screen.
And secondly, why would you change anything? You adapt PKD because of the idea and how brilliantly it unfolds to its conclusion; if you replace that with your own spin, it's no longer PKD. Blade Runner very much lacks the feel of a PKD story, for example (no absurdist humour, no existential angst, no color; everything is just drab and dreary, which is a property that plagued some of his mainstream writings but very few of his SF works; if BR feels like anything it's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, which is a sad and bleak book).
Hope they bring back Joel and the S1 formula for success
A show which cost $55M, not necessarily one which is worth $55M. The article gives me the impression that those funds weren't spent responsibly; for all we know, this could be the sci-fi version of The Room.
Heck, nobody even seems to be able to film a decent "War of the Worlds" that is like the book.
First, the way the economics of these endeavours are so flawed that even the most passionate creatives / sponsors can't viably get the finished or near-finished product out to paying customers.
Second, that this stuff doesn't get leaked more often - especially recent examples. Wikipedia also has a running list of abandoned films, though it looks to be US / Euro-centric. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empires_of_the_Deep (there's plenty of more interesting write-ups around the backstory)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_abandoned_and_unfinish...
Also, after they've killed The Peripheral before it actually got interesting, I don't think there is even interest in the plot out there.
But I agree with you: it would be EXTREMELLY difficult to live up to the book anyhow. Nevertheless, I think it will happen eventually: the book is incredible.
Were executives concerned about possible risks to people, or were they trying to use (misuse?) the police to establish the conditions for a contract clause or insurance policy?
Rinsch sounded from other assertions in the article like he was having some kind of mental health and/or substance challenges. But I don't understand the uncritical acceptance of this bit by the journalist.
Then, if anything happens, they're less likely to be successfully sued.
Especially given the rest of the behavior detailed in the article, which as always, no one ever reads
Okay. So maybe don’t passive aggressively bring it up then
this kind of just seems like the system work as intended. if you are thinking you need to call the police to perform a wellness check on somebody just for the purposes of covering your own ass, you're probably justified in calling for a wellness check.
> A correction was made on Nov. 22, 2023 : An earlier version of this article misstated the status of Carl Erik Rinsch’s series when Netflix bought the rights to it. There was a script, but it was not complete."
'is not complete' can mean many things.
Also Netflix initially planned more than one season, but then they backtracked when the script was extending beyond the first season - there seems to be a gap in the narrative of the article.
> Netflix gave Mr. Rinsch final cut, a privilege it had previously bestowed on only a few directors. And it assured Mr. Rinsch and Ms. Rosés that they would remain “locked for life” to all subsequent seasons and spinoffs
vs
> Mr. Rinsch had missed several production milestones and was toggling between two versions of the script, a shorter one that matched the original 13-episode plan and one twice as long that would have required greenlighting a second season.
Also 'missed several production milestones' is a bit vague. That year we had Corona, which would naturally lead to some sort of delays.
No they didn't. The article is pretty clear that they only greenlit one season. That 'locked for life' quote is saying that if Netflix decided to buy more seasons and/or spinoffs, Rinsch was guaranteed involvement, aka Netflix couldn't just fire and replace him (like NBC did to Dan Harmon on Community for example).
Presumably that was one of the "detailed questions" that he "declined to respond" to.
For software companies, investments are nominal in the sense that they come with responsible CFO's, budgeting and reporting structures that would prevent the money from being vacuumed into personal accounts for investment gambling.
Is it really the case that a Netflix would just wire $11M based on a promise? Or that they would tolerate the kind of hostaging that insists on building v2 before delivering v1?
I assumed that anyone in any field disbursing $1M+ contracts has provisions for monitoring, bad faith, etc. (and clawing back misappropriated fund). But not here?
If it was a myth then everybody would be in a place to pay themselves as much as they're paying themselves.
A movie studio and a venture fund seem to have similar economics.
In addition, there are no low-risk startups. There are, however, relatively low risk films and TV shows to be made.
I don't know about you, but if someone gave me $55m to make a TV show, I'd like to think I wouldn't blow $6m of that betting on the stock market. If even one of these allegations are true (and honestly I don't really see a reason to doubt them), this is a hilariously brazen misappropriation of funds.
Obviously we haven't seen the contract/deal he signed with Netflix, but I highly doubt it has language like "you can spend this money we're giving you on literally anything you want, including /r/WallStreetBets behavior".
The article does claim he lost that, but then claims he made more back.
It claims Netflix transferred him $11M, he tried played markets and lost then speculated crypto and more than doubled the money, then bought toys, and was still up:
Netflix wired Mr. Rinsch’s production company $11 million... Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab... lost $5.9 million in a matter of weeks [then later] transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin ... this one paid off: ... a balance of nearly $27 million...
At this point, he's up. Then the spending spree "tab came to $8.7 million", but that still leaves more than the $11M.
Not saying that was a good idea or appropriate, but from the bank account point of view, the production balance ended up ahead.
But his misappropriation came out ahead, instead of "blowing it".
So in the end, probably no lesson was learned.
And he clearly failed to deliver on his side of the deal.
Quibbling over this is unproductive and fussy.
Failing to deliver on a project because of cost overruns, reshoots, whatever is one thing. Buying cars, "investing" in crypto and otherwise using the funds for purposes not reasonably defined within the contract is fraud, plain and simple.
The delusions, gambling addiction, reckless impulsive behavior.
Second story we see where amphetamine abuse played a part (SBF being another one)