Lockouts, lawsuits, and losing money: The first-time director set straight on the road to ruin
One of the industry’s favoured methods of unearthing a talented director has always been to look at those working in commercials, which has proven to be a consistent goldmine for digging up talents capable of going on to achieve great things.
Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Jonathan Glazer, Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Adrian Lyne, Guillermo del Toro, and Edgar Wright are just a sampling of the big names who cut their teeth making short-form videos for various brands, and there was a widespread belief from those in the know that Carl Rinsch had the potential to follow in their footsteps.
His commercials had won plenty of praise and even some awards, and he was quickly singled out by someone familiar with that career path as a rising star. Rinsch was hand-selected by Scott to helm the Alien prequel that eventually became Prometheus, although hiring an untested and unproven filmmaker eventually saw him overruled by the studio.
Undeterred, Rinsch flirted with the idea of remaking sci-fi classic Logan’s Run before settling on 47 Ronin as his feature-length debut, which was pitched as a cross between The Lord of the Rings and Gladiator. Keanu Reeves was hired to lead a mostly Japanese cast, with the debutant being handed a massive $175million budget to heap further pressure on his shoulders.
Once cameras started rolling, though, Rinsch buckled under it. When principal photography had wrapped, the director was removed entirely from the post-production process, with Universal co-chief Donna Langley taking over in the editing suite. The studio had already been taking the lead on shaping the final cut, but extensive reshoots were ordered that ended up swelling the budget to $225m, with 47 Ronin being delayed from its original November 2012 release date to December 2013.
The end result was one of the biggest bombs in box office history and, for Rinsch, a one-way trip straight to the director’s jail. However, television potentially provided the ideal outlet to rehabilitate his professional reputation and standing, but that’s where things really went off the rails to a spectacular extent.
Rinsch and his wife Gabriela Rosés began developing an ambitious sci-fi series, which told the story of an artificially created humanoid species faced with familiar socio-political conflicts that threaten an apocalypse. Creating six short instalments to pitch their vision, Netflix ended up being so won over the streaming service agreed to a $61m deal to fund an entire full-length series based on the concept called Conquest.
Reports emerged of Rinsch behaving erratically on set and allegedly developing a reliance on prescription drugs, with Rosés encouraging him to enter rehab. Despite things facing the real danger of going south at a rapid rate, Netflix was convinced to send him a further $11m in funding, which Rinsch transferred into his personal account bought stock options before losing more than half of it in a matter of weeks.
According to The New York Times, the filmmaker would then begin emailing Netflix executives to tell them he had pioneered a means of mapping “the coronavirus signal emanating from the earth”. His spouse filed for divorce and subsequently claimed he’d texted her saying he’d developed the ability to foresee lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions, before Netflix finally cut ties with Conquest after spending tens of millions of dollars and having absolutely nothing to show for it.
With the money left over, though, he invested in cryptocurrency, bought a fleet of luxury cars, and argued that it wasn’t only contractually his, but by the terms of the agreement he signed with Netflix, the company still owed him an additional $14m. The case remains ongoing, but it would be an understatement to suggest that Rinsch’s days as a working Hollywood professional may just be over.
