Rinsch sentenced to 30 months; Madonna's 21-year wait ends
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- Carl Erik Rinsch sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday for wire fraud, money laundering, and illegal transactions after defrauding Netflix out of $11 million.link ›
- Netflix poured $55 million into Rinsch's sci-fi series Conquest (originally titled White Horse), which produced zero completed episodes before the deal collapsed.link ›
- Prosecutors tied Rinsch's spending to five Rolls-Royces, a Ferrari, Gilead stock, cryptocurrency, and $1,787,000 in credit-card debt drawn from the disputed funds.link ›
- Neon picked up Luca Guadagnino's OpenAI drama 'Artificial' (with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman) after Amazon MGM passed, citing conflict with its $50 billion OpenAI investment.link ›
- Madonna released Confessions II on Friday, her 15th studio album and sequel to 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor, with critics calling it her strongest record in roughly two decades.link ›
- Robert Eggers dropped the Werwulf trailer with Aaron Taylor-Johnson in a wolfman transformation, and Focus Features booked the folk-horror film for Christmas Day release.link ›
- UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy quit X on Thursday and pulled the Department for Culture, Media and Sport with her, the second government department to exit after the Attorney General's Office.link ›
- Michael Byrne, the British character actor in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Braveheart, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, died June 20 at age 82.link ›
Netflix finally closed the books on its most expensive nothing: 30 months in federal prison for Carl Erik Rinsch, who turned an $11 million advance on the sci-fi series Conquest into five Rolls-Royces, a Ferrari, and roughly $1.787 million in credit-card payoff. U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff credited Rinsch's mental-health struggles as 'explaining some of the excesses' but not the lies, sealing the fraud conviction after prosecutors traced the luxury spending into the same accounts Netflix had wired. Conquest never delivered a single episode of its $55 million budget. The rest of the week belonged to Madonna, whose 21-years-in-the-making Confessions II drew the strongest reviews of her post-2005 career — a sequel nobody asked for that somehow landed.
The stories behind this week
Director Carl Rinsch Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison for Defrauding NetflixThe 30-month sentence caps a case that cost Netflix roughly $55 million in sunk production costs and yielded zero episodes of Conquest — a stark illustration of the financial exposure studios absorb when they front-load director-driven deals without visible delivery milestones. Judge Rakoff's split ruling — crediting mental-health mitigation while still imposing prison time — signals courts will punish the fraud even when underlying explanations are credible.
Neon Acquires Guadagnino's 'Artificial' From Amazon MGMAmazon's $50 billion OpenAI investment created an obvious conflict with distributing a movie dramatizing OpenAI's most volatile corporate moment, and Neon now inherits a prestige awards contender — one Deadline commenters suggest may have come at fire-sale prices — that will compete in this year's Oscar race.
Madonna's Confessions II is finally here - but is it worth the 21-year wait?Madonna deliberately turned away from streaming-optimized trends — no drum and bass revival, no PinkPantheress mimicry — to make a record rooted in 1980s underground house, a rare stance for a 67-year-old pop superstar. The album's most powerful moments are autobiographical, including grief songs for her late brother Christopher and stepmother Joan Ciccone (who died in 2024), making it her most personal record in roughly three decades.
Madonna: Confessions II review – nostalgic dancefloor trip sparks her most vital album in two decadesMadonna's post-2005 commercial slide — each album selling roughly half the previous one's count, with Madame X at 500,000 versus Confessions on a Dance Floor's 10 million — frames Confessions II as a deliberate pivot back to her dancefloor roots. For longtime fans alienated during that decline, the album's house, trip-hop, and 90s Mo' Wax influences function less as nostalgia bait than as a return to the sound where her commercial authority was last unquestioned.
Taylor-Johnson Transforms in Eggers' 'Werwulf' TrailerEggers has built a devoted following on the strength of four genre pieces — "The Witch," "The Lighthouse," "The Northman," and "Nosferatu" — and Christmas Day is a bold slot for folk horror against Hollywood's holiday blockbusters. The reunions with Sjón and Blaschke signal creative continuity rather than reinvention, giving fans exactly what they expect from an Eggers period piece.
UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy Quits X, DCMS to FollowWith DCMS departing and Ofcom's investigation still open, X now faces a coordinated pullout by two U.K. government departments and the prospect of fines up to £18 million or 10% of worldwide revenue — turning what had been scattered institutional defections into a formal regulatory confrontation.
Michael Byrne Dies: ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Braveheart’, ‘Indiana Jones’ Actor Was 82Byrne built a six-decade career as a dependable British character actor whose villainous supporting turns in three global franchises — Indiana Jones (1989), Braveheart (1995), and Harry Potter (2010) — have reached multiple generations of moviegoers, and his theater roots trace directly to Olivier's 1960s National Theatre ensemble at the Old Vic.
Disney+ Orders Live-Action 'Last Kids On Earth' PilotThe property shifts from Netflix — where the animated version ran 2019-2020 — into Disney's family/YA pipeline, giving Fiveash and Stoteraux a second crack at supernatural teen drama after their one-season Gotham Knights run on CW and a multi-book franchise already proven at retail.
Why it matters: Rakoff's split sentence — mental-health credits shaved off but no absolution — establishes that studios can recover from directors who burn advances on themselves, even when sympathetic explanations are offered.
