EXCLUSIVE: HBO is teaming up with Doctor Who producer Bad Wolf to develop a series about Inigo Philbrick, the flamboyant art dealer jailed for committing more than $86 million in fraud.
Bad Wolf has secured the rights to All That Glitters, an upcoming memoir from Orlando Whitfield, who was a close friend and business partner of Philbrick.
The Sony-owned production company is in the early stages of developing the HBO series, which Whitfield hopes can be like Succession in the way it depicts the lives of the elite.
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HBO declined to comment on the project. Bad Wolf previously made Industry for HBO and the production company’s co-founder Jane Tranter was an executive producer on Succession.
Whitfield’s book describes Philbrick as an extravagant character who immersed himself in a world of private jets and multimillion-dollar deals for major clients.
His façade spectacularly crumbled when debt, lawsuits, and court summonses piled up, and in 2019 he fled to the remote island nation of Vanuatu, 300 miles west of Fiji.
Within a year, Philbrick was arrested by the FBI and later tried and convicted. He is currently serving seven years in prison in Pennsylvania. During the downfall, Whitfield had a breakdown and left the art world.
Tranter said: “Orlando’s unique voice and access makes one of the most exciting manuscripts we’ve read in a very long time.”
Philbrick’s story is also the subject of a three-part BBC documentary currently in production at Blue Ant Media. The documentary has access to Philbrick and his fiancée Victoria Baker-Harber, who appeared in Made in Chelsea.