Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg’s production company Unrealistic Ideas and Fortune will produce a new documentary giving a 360-degree view of the relationship between disgraced FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the documentary will showcase the influences of both founders’ upbringings on their journeys to stardom.
Sam Bankman-Fried and CZ’s Public Disagreements Laid Bare
Wahlberg will co-produce the documentary with Unrealistic’s Stephen Levinson, Archie Gips, Fortune’s Alysson Shontell, and Jeff John Roberts.
Changpeng Zhao and several FTX executives have agreed to participate in the production.
“The tumultuous relationship between SBF and CZ has played out to a certain extent in articles and on Twitter, but this definitive documentary will give people a 360-degree, personal look at the entire FTX saga,” Shontell told The Hollywood Reporter.
Sam Bankman-Fried had publicly accused CZ of catalyzing the insolvency of Alameda Research, a market maker that proved the Achille’s heel of Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire before it crumbled in November 2022. CZ denied allegations that he caused FTX’s downfall but disapproved of SBF’s political lobbying at other crypto companies’ expense.
Bankman-Fried faces criminal charges in the U.S., including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and campaign finance law violations. He was arrested in early December 2022 after FTX declared bankruptcy about a month earlier. He is out on a $250 million recognizance bond underwritten by his parents and two as-yet-unnamed guarantors.
Crypto Stories Prove Ripe Fodder for Film and TV
The documentary announcement was roasted on Twitter, with Solana NFT marketplace comparing it to the widely-panned Transformers movie franchise starring Wahlberg.
Others suggested that, instead of being a documentary, it should be a movie with League of Legends tournaments. SBF had reportedly played the League of Legends video game during several interviews and conferences.
Regardless of the prevailing negativity, crypto is slowly garnering an enviable canon of intriguing sagas, from the rise and fall of the first bitcoin-driven darknet marketplace to breathtaking frauds that beggar belief to founding stories whose colorful characters have shaped the direction of decentralized money.
In 2021, Lionsgate released a film about the rise and fall of Silk Road, an illegal online market that accepted Bitcoin payments for contraband goods and services. Its founder, Ross Ulbricht, is currently serving a life sentence.
About a year ago, Netflix greenlighted a series about Ilya Liechtenstein and Heather Morgan’s alleged laundering of almost 120,000 BTC. While under house arrest, Morgan recently started a new business development and marketing job at an undisclosed tech firm.
Amazon Prime recently partnered with production studio ABGO to produce a series on the fall of FTX. ABGO’s founders said that the saga’s mixture of drugs, tech, criminality, and enigmatic founder warrant further investigation. Moneyball author Michael Lewis has successfully pitched the movie and television rights of his Sam Bankman-Fried book to Apple.
Gladiator director Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions will produce an Ethereum origins film based on the bestseller, The Infinite Machine.
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