Do y’all remember 2015? If you’re up on your history of price-jacking pharma-bro dickheads buying one-of-a-kind albums for exorbitant sums, you may recall that was the year Martin Shkreli purchased the sole copy of Wu-Tang Clan‘s seventh studio album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million.
Now, the whole affair will be detailed in a new film set to arrive on Netflix. As Collider reports, Brittany Runs a Marathon director Paul Downs Colaizzo is behind the project, which will be produced by Wu-Tang leader RZA along with Brad Pitt’s Plan B. The screenplay was written by Ian Edelman (How to Make It in America). There’s no word yet on when it looks like the movie will be arriving or who’ll make up its cast.
If you’re not across it, Shkreli purchased the only existing physical copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin at auction back in May 2015. The 31-track double-CD came packaged with an 88-year copyright.
Details around the purchase were revealed around the same time that Shkreli’s company Turing Pharmaceuticals copped flak for significantly increasing the price of the drug Daraprim. The HIV/AIDS medication which went from $13.50 a tablet to $750 – a $75,000 cost for a course of treatment. According to the hip-hop collective, the sale took place before Shkreli jacked up the price of the drug, and they donated a “significant portion”.
Shkreli is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence on securities fraud charges. The album was seized as part of a federal assets forfeiture back in 2018 after Shkreli’s conviction.
