After suitors flocked to a sci-fi project by Carl Rinsch, director of a single movie, the winner handed over money and control. They’re still fighting.
Near the height of the streaming boom in the fall of 2018, a half-dozen studios and video platforms lined up to woo a little-known filmmaker named Carl Erik Rinsch. He had directed only one movie, “47 Ronin.” It was a commercial and critical dud, and Mr. Rinsch’s tussles with its producers had raised eyebrows, even in an industry where such conflicts are the norm.
But memories in Hollywood are short, and the demand for new content was intense. In just a decade, the number of scripted TV shows had soared from 200 to more than 500, with new streaming services from Disney, Apple and NBCUniversal on the way. Amid the feeding frenzy, the project that Mr. Rinsch was pitching — a science-fiction series about artificial humans — became a hot property.
