Netflix is taking crypto to the big screen. Earlier this month the streamer announced it’s in production on One Attempt Remaining, a romantic comedy built around cryptocurrency mechanics — including wallets and seed phrases. The move marks a notable shift: until now, most crypto on film has lived in the margins — indie features, direct-to-video thrillers, and throwaway mentions used to add a dash of techy futurism. Why has Hollywood been slow to embrace crypto? Directors and producers working in the space point to two big reasons: public unfamiliarity and storytelling constraints. “Up until recently, people didn’t really understand it,” says Leo Matchett, CEO of Web3 film fund Decentralized Pictures. He compares crypto’s cultural arc to the internet’s — once the web became central to daily life, movies followed with hacker thrillers and online plots. “Films are a reflection of our daily lives,” Matchett says. “As long as crypto isn’t a part of that, it will stay out of the art as well.” That absence has pushed crypto into a familiar cinematic role: a plot device and often a villain. Indie and genre films tend to treat crypto as the payment method or MacGuffin — a modern equivalent of gold bars in Die Hard: With a Vengeance. Cutter Hoderine, director of the DCP-backed indie heist Cold Wallet, describes crypto onscreen as “just the payment method” — something that gives the plot value, but not necessarily complexity. To communicate basics like wallets and seed phrases in Cold Wallet, Matchett says they intentionally simplified the tech for mainstream viewers. Crime and scandal have dominated many portrayals. Examples include: - Crypto (2019) and Money Plane (2020), where cryptocurrency is tied to money laundering and illicit schemes. - Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which stages a bumbling crypto-based deal for a cyberweapon. - The Quiet Maid (2023), part-funded by crypto and NFTs, in which crypto-affluent characters embody the excesses of the new money. - Recent action films such as The Beekeeper (2024) and Play Dirty (2025), which use “crypto bro” figures as modern yuppie-type antagonists. That negative framing has roots in culture and in market reality. “They did it to themselves,” says Viviane Ford, creator of web series Crypto Castle, referring to meme-driven crypto culture — Pepe-themed tokens, Dogecoin-styled stunts, Lamborghini flexes — that made easy parody fodder. High-profile collapses such as FTX and Terra, and the losses many investors suffered, also hardened public perception. “Crypto is gambling,” Ford says, “and it just tried to have a sexier version of how to frame it.” Commercial partnerships on film have been surprisingly scarce. Cold Wallet featured a crypto wallet, but Matchett says the production “didn’t get any buy-in or product placement dollars.” That’s partly structural: crypto’s boom-bust cycles don’t line up with the multi-year timeline of filmmaking. “It’s so feast or famine,” Matchett explains. Companies that can sponsor a film during a bull market may not survive to see the movie released. Still, the tide may be turning. One Attempt Remaining goes beyond token name-checks, using wallet mechanics and seed phrases as actual plot hooks. Ford’s Crypto Castle tries to challenge caricature by spending years documenting the personalities behind the hype; she lived among crypto enthusiasts in San Francisco and has adapted that experience into both a stand-up show and a more empathetic web series. Short films can also explore crypto meaningfully — the short Límite uses Monero as a symbol of the protagonist’s potential after an on-chain proposal is approved by the currency’s community. Industry insiders see unexplored storytelling territory. “There is certainly some amazing potential,” Matchett says. He argues feature films have yet to produce a clear “crypto success story” onscreen — a straightforward narrative that explains the tech simply while weaving it into a compelling drama. When that happens, he predicts, crypto will follow other technologies into genre cinema: “It will be all over heist and adventure films.” For now, Hollywood’s approach remains cautious and uneven: the technology is polarizing, the culture is easy to lampoon, and the business cycles complicate sponsorship. But with mainstream studios like Netflix finally greenlighting crypto-centered projects — and indie creators pushing more nuanced portrayals — cryptocurrency is moving from fringe prop to a subject filmmakers may soon explore in depth. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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