Netflix spent $55M on sci-fi series that will almost certainly never be released

https://web.archive.org/web/20231124204950/https://www.nytim...

Basically, they greenlit a $55M movie with a director who had just one movie under his belt (while the movie was bad, he had made successful short films). He became erratic (conspiracy theories, etc), and Netflix cut him short. He ultimately ended up gambling $10.5M of the final $11M with a personal brokerage account (he did end up making a ton of money, which he went on to use for personal purchases).