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Netflix is getting into the cryptocurrency business, with a limited series produced by the Obamas on the rise and fall of crypto exchange FTX and its disgraced founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.
The Altruists, from Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, will focus on the eccentric entrepreneur and his business – and sometimes personal – partner Caroline Ellison.
The show will feature “two hyper-smart, ambitious young idealists who tried to remake the global financial system in the blink of an eye – and then seduced, coaxed, and teased each other into stealing $8 billion”, according to the official logline.
Northern Irish actor Anthony Boyle will play Bankman-Fried, with US actor Julia Garner signed to play Ellison.
Graham Moore, writer of the 2014 film The Imitation Game, and Jacqueline Hoyt, an executive producer of the Prime Videos series The Underground Railroad, will serve as co-showrunners of the eight-episode series. The Circle and Shrinking director James Ponsoldt will direct.
“For nearly three years now, Sam and Caroline’s story has been my daily obsession,” Moore told Netflix’s Tudum. “I’m so grateful to my friends at Netflix and Higher Ground for loving this story not only as much as I do, but in the same way that I do. And we can’t wait to show all of you why.”
FTX, one of world’s best-known cryptocurrency exchange platforms with an A-list roster of celebrity proponents, collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2022 after a run on customer withdrawals revealed a missing $8bn in customer funds.
Bankman-Fried, a leading proponent of the movement known as “effective altruism” and a major donor to both political parties, was convicted in November 2023 on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy; he was ordered to forfeit $11bn in assets and spend 25 years in prison.
Ellison, who was CEO of FTX’s associated hedge fund Alameda Research, as well as Bankman-Fried’s on-and-off girlfriend, served as the star prosecution witness after pleading guilty to other charges.
The Altruists marks a return for Garner to Netflix – she played another notorious scammer, Anna Delvey, in the 2022 series Inventing Anna, and won three Emmys for her role on the Netflix hit Ozark. Boyle’s credits include FX’s Say Nothing and Apple’s Masters of the Air and Manhunt.
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The series is one of several projects in the works on the high-profile financial saga. It was announced in November that Girls creator Lena Dunham will write a movie based on Michael Lewis’s 2023 bestseller Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon for Apple and A24. Amazon Prime Video has a limited series in the works from Marvel directors Joe and Anthony Russo and writer David Weil.
There are also multiple competing nonfiction projects: one from Vice Media and the Information on effective altruism, and another from studio XTR and director David Darg that promises “unprecedented access to key players at FTX and the cryptocurrency community” in Bankman-Fried’s home base of the Bahamas.
A third documentary from Fortune and Mark Wahlberg’s company Unrealistic Ideas will focus on the relationship between Bankman-Fried and one of his most vocal critics, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. Bloomberg has already aired a nonfiction special on the debacle, titled Ruin: Money, Ego & Deception at FTX.
