$70M Bitcoin Movie Puts Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto

Hollywood Takes on Bitcoin's Biggest Mystery

A $70 million feature film titled Bitcoin, starring Gal Gadot, Casey Affleck, Pete Davidson, and Isla Fisher and directed by Doug Liman, has entered post-production. Liman is best known for directing The Bourne Identity. According to author and podcaster Terence Michael, who first flagged the film's current stage, the production lacks a major domestic distributor ahead of release.

Gadot plays a seasoned war correspondent named Lotte who is recruited by Calvin Ayre (Davidson), a crypto and gambling mogul, to write an investigative report about Dr. Craig Wright (Affleck), who is said to be the elusive Satoshi and who has survived myriad assassination attempts as a result. The film was written by Nick Schenk and produced by Ryan Kavanaugh and Lawrence Grey, with production beginning at the end of February.

"Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi" is described as the first fully-generated, studio-quality AI feature film. The film's budget was slashed from an estimated $300 million-plus down to roughly $70 million, with AI technology doing the heavy lifting on cost reduction. The film was shot inside a former car showroom that the production team wrapped in a gray screen, earning it the moniker "the gray box."

A Contested Claim Heads to the Big Screen

Wright has spent years asserting he invented Bitcoin, a claim that has been widely disputed and, in a 2024 UK court ruling, was explicitly rejected by a judge. In a landmark ruling by Judge James Mellor on March 14, 2024, the court dismissed Australian computer scientist Craig Wright's near decade-old claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. Judge Mellor said the evidence that Wright was not Satoshi was "overwhelming," declaring that Wright "is not the author of the Bitcoin white paper" and "is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011."

By promoting Wright's past claims of being Bitcoin's creator, the film appears on course to revive an old controversy that seemingly subsided after the UK court ruling rejected the claim. The involvement of Calvin Ayre, a known supporter and promoter of Wright's assertion, lends credence to the theory that supporters of the computer scientist are using Hollywood A-listers to circumvent the court ruling. Michael's post sparked an immediate wave of skepticism and debate within the crypto community, with many expressing frustration over Hollywood giving a platform to long-debunked claims, while others urged industry insiders to fund a competing film that properly honors Satoshi Nakamoto's real legacy.

Whether the film finds a major distributor or not, it is set to bring one of crypto's most divisive debates to a mainstream audience.

Sources:
The Wrap: Inside Doug Liman's $70 Million AI-Made Movie Starring Casey Affleck and Gal Gadot
Bitcoin.com News: $70M Bitcoin Movie Portrays Craig Wright as Satoshi
CoinTelegraph: UK Court Rules Craig Wright Not Nakamoto, Ending Long-Standing Drama