Once Upon A Time In Shaolin

[GeneChing]

Exclusive: Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Shaolin’ Album Netflix Movie Lands ‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’ Director
BY JEFF SNEIDER AUGUST 24, 2020



Brittany Runs a Marathon helmer Paul Downs Colaizzo is set to direct the Netflix movie Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which purports to tell the true story behind controversial pharma bro Martin Shkreli‘s acquisition of the sole copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s album of the same name.

Ian Edelman (How to Make It in America) wrote the script, and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA is expected to produce alongside Plan B, the production company owned by Brad Pitt. The project itself was first revealed last week in an STX press release about Edelman writing the Pete Davidson–O’Shea Jackson Jr. movie American Sole.

Colaizzo has already done his own pass on the script, which follows the auction for Wu-Tang Clan’s seventh studio album and its aftermath. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was recorded in secret over a period of six years, and a single two-CD copy was pressed in 2014. It was stored in a secure vault in Morocco before selling to Shkreli for a reported $2 million the following year. In March 2018, a federal court seized control of the album following Shkreli’s conviction for securities fraud, which required him to forfeit millions of dollars in various assets.


Image via Amazon Studios

According to RZA, the sale was agreed to before Shkreli greedily hiked up the price of Daraprim, and that once Wu-Tang Clan learned of the buyer’s identity, the group donated a “significant portion” of the proceeds to charity. Shkreli later tried to sell the album on eBay for north of $1 million, but his legal troubles prevented him from completing the sale, and though RZA attempted to buy back the album himself, terms of the original deal prohibited him from doing so. As of now, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin cannot be commercially exploited until 2103, which means you shouldn’t expect to hear any snippets on the soundtrack of this Netflix film.

Along with RZA and the late Ol’ Dirty *******, Wu-Tang Clan’s members include GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa and Cappadonna.

Colaizzo made his feature directorial debut with Amazon’s acclaimed dramedy Brittany Runs a Marathon, which stars Jillian Bell in a truly fantastic performance. Colaizzo is working with Legendary to develop an adaptation of Leila Slimani’s international bestseller The Perfect Nanny, which follows a lawyer who decides to return to work after having children. He’s represented by CAA. Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.

An obvious project. Netflix is on top of things...

[GeneChing]

‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli’s $2m Wu-Tang Clan album sold by US government
The album, purchased by Shkreli for $2m, was bought for an undisclosed sum


An unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album that Martin Shkreli forfeited after his securities fraud conviction was sold Tuesday for an undisclosed sum. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Guardian staff and agencies
Tue 27 Jul 2021 21.23 EDT

An unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album that “Pharma Bro” entrepreneur Martin Shkreli forfeited after his securities fraud conviction was sold Tuesday for an undisclosed sum, though prosecutors say it was enough to fully satisfy the rest of what he owed on a $7.4m forfeiture order he faced after his 2018 sentencing.

The entrepreneur once boasted that he paid $2m in 2015 at auction for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the 31-track double album the Wu-Tang Clan spent six years creating.

He later put the album on eBay, but was incarcerated for fraud before the sale (the winning bid was just over a million dollars) before the sale could be completed, Forbes reported at the time.

“With today’s sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete,” Acting US Attorney Jacquelyn M Kasulis in Brooklyn said in a release.

Authorities said the sales contract for the album contained a confidentiality provision that protects information relating to the buyer and price.

In a civil case in Manhattan federal court, lawyers wrote in an April document that Shkreli had already reduced his forfeiture debt by about $5m.

Attorney Benjamin Brafman, who represented Shkreli, said he couldn’t comment because of the confidentiality order. He said in an email that he can only confirm that the entire forfeiture amount has now been paid.

Shkreli, 38, is scheduled for release in October 2022 after serving a seven-year prison sentence.

He was prosecuted after he gained fame in 2015 when, unrelated to the prosecution, he boosted by 5,000% the price of Daraprim, a previously cheap drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be fatal to people with Aids or other immune-system disorders.

Martin Shkreli, former chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc, departs after a hearing at U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., June 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Shkreli’s purchase of the Wu-Tang Clan album came as group member RZA said he wanted the album – packaged in a hand-crafted silver and nickel case which includes a 174-page book wrapped in leather – to be viewed as a piece of contemporary art.

In 2016, Shkreli said if Donald Trump won the election, he would release the album and if Hillary Clinton won he would destroy it. When Trump did win, he streamed the album intro and one of the tracks, according to Gizmodo.

At sentencing, Shkreli also claimed to own an unreleased Lil Wayne album, “Tha Carter V.” In its debut week in 2008, the rapper’s “Tha Carter III” sold more than 1m copies and helped launch Lil Wayne to superstar status.

In 2017, Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions of dollars in two failed hedge funds he operated. Brafman described Shkreli at sentencing as a misunderstood eccentric who used unconventional means to make his defrauded investors even wealthier.

– With Associated Press

This article was amended on 28 July 2021 to remove an erroneous reference to “the Aids virus”.

Wait...who bought it?
Stay tuned...

[GeneChing]

We Will Soon Know Who Now Owns the One-of-a-Kind Wu-Tang Clan Album
MUSIC - 6 DAYS AGO

DIMAS SANFIORENZO

Photo Credit: Rashaad Patterson/Paddle8
We should know the identity of the person who bought Wu Tang’s mythical Once Upon A Time In Shaolin album within the next 60 days.

Last week, the Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office announced that they sold the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, which was once owned by infamous “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. The buyer and how much that person (or company) paid for the album was not revealed, but Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said the sale price covered the balance of a $7.4 million forfeiture judgment Shkreli owed.

Now, we will soon find out who purchased the album.

On Tuesday, August 3rd, Peter Scoolidge, a The New York-based lawyer, reveled that he was the person who handled the purchase for the unnamed buyer. In an interview with CNBC, Scoolidge said the lawyer “is going to identify themselves in the future… I’d say in the next 30 to 60 days.”

In the article, CNBC points out some interesting points: the fact that, in 2016, Scoolidge represented artist Jason Koza in a lawsuit against Shkreli, RZA, and Once Upon A Time In Shaolin‘s co-producer Cilvaringz because of the illustrations of his artwork that came along with the album. Then, in 2018, Scoolidge represented Cilvaringz in another matter around the album. So the question remains — did someone involved with the Wu-Tang buy this album from the government?

The story of the Once Upon A Time In Shaolin album is bonkers. The one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan LP was recorded over a six year stretch and hidden away in a secret Moroccan vault.It was then sold to Martin Shkreli in 2015. A wealthy pharmaceutical businessman, Shkreli became infamous after the company he owned purchased the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim (which is often used to treat malaria and prolong the lives of HIV-positive patients) and raised its price from $13.50 per pill to $750.

Shkreli had the option to release the album for the world to hear whenever he chooses, but if he wanted to do it commercially, he would have to wait 88 years. (Shout out to the Wu-Tang Clan’s strict copyright arrangement.) The album allegedly features appearances from the entire Wu-Tang Clan, Redman, and Cher with production from Cilvaringz.. The album, which is on a CD, is held in a silver jewel-encrusted box with a wax Wu-Tang Clan seal and leather-bound liner notes.

We'll check back in when it is revealed.

[GeneChing]

Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time In Shaolin Sold To Cryptocurrency Collective

NEWS OCTOBER 20, 2021 12:33 PM BY JAMES RETTIG



Over the summer, we found out that Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin had been sold by the United States government to pay off a portion of Martin Shkreli’s $7.4 million monetary judgement in relation to his conviction for securities fraud. At the time, the US Attorney’s Office did not disclose who bought the album or how much it sold for. But as The New York Times reports today, it was purchased by a cryptocurrency collective known as PleasrDAO.

Per the Times, PleaserDAO took possession of the album on September 10 and its sole physical copy is apparently held in a vault in New York City. “This album at its inception was a kind of protest against rent-seeking middlemen, people who are taking a cut away from the artist,” PleasrDAO’s Jamis Johnson told the paper. “Crypto very much shares that same ethos.” He went on to call Once Upon A Time “kind of the OG NFT.” And indeed, a nonfungible token was created to serve as the ownership deed for the physical album, and all 74 members of PleaserDAO have collective ownership of that deed.

When Wu-Tang Clan put Once Upon A Time In Shaolin up for sale in 2014, they put some stipulations in place: The album could be played for individual people at public events, but could not be widely distributed until 2103, or 88 years after it was first sold. Shkreli reportedly paid somewhere in the range of $2 million for the album initially.

PleaserDAO say that they want to make Once Upon A Time In Shaolin more widely available. “We believe that we can do something with this piece,” Johnson said. “To enable it to be shared and ideally owned in part by fans and anyone in the world.” But it’s unclear how exactly they would do that while still honoring Wu-Tang Clan’s original wishes. On their part, the group’s RZA declined to comment to the Times and Cilvaringz, a producer who worked on the album and its concept, said that “we wanted to honor the NFT concept without breaking our own rules.”

Once Upon A Time In Shaolin was sold for the equivalent of $4 million in cryptocurrency as tied to the US dollar. Because the government requires standard currency, an intermediary was paid roughly $2.2 million to then pay the government.

This story keeps getting better and better...