The era of Netflix giving directors huge amounts of money with little oversight has come crashing down. On 11 December 2025, a New York court found filmmaker Carl Erik Rinsch guilty of fraud. This case is one of the strangest financial disasters in the entertainment world. Rinsch, once celebrated for directing 47 Ronin, had been entrusted with a lavish budget to make a new science-fiction series for Netflix.
Instead of delivering the show, he siphoned off millions of dollars for personal gain. The total cost to Netflix is about £44 million ($55 million), and not a single episode ever reached the screen.
