In 2007, Terry Watanabe, a wealthy man of affairs from Omaha, Neb., missed o'er $200 meg gambling, mainly at Caesars Palace and the Rio. It’s a dubious effort that immortalized him as i of Las Vegas’ biggest losers. Now thither are plans to pretend a plastic film virtually Watanabe and his wretched losing streak.
Foundation Media Partners has secured sole(a) rights to Watanabe’s riches-to-rags life story, Deadline reports. The troupe wants to pee-pee a feature take near the legendary whale, as easily as a documentary film and/or book. Watanabe has non spoken publically nigh his experiences in Las Vegas since he settled a lawsuit with Caesars Entertainment, so known as Harrah’s, in 2010.
The cassino manipulator was chasing a $14.7 zillion line of business of credit entry that Watanabe had gambled with and lost. Watanabe’s denial was that the gambling casino had victimised him and allowed him to risk piece drunk.
“I’ve heard a lot virtually Dame Ellen Terry o'er the years and became genial of obsessed with learning to a greater extent near him,” Foundation Media Partners’ beginner and CEO, Patrick Hughes, told Deadline.
I’ve ever imagined notification his story with a filmmaker that could really enchant the kind of claustrophobic, surreal reality he was trapped in,” Langston Hughes added. “All the money inwards the world and a mettle of gold, and so he got caught on a crazy hamster wheel of opulence and self-destruction that’s as tragic as it is fascinating.”
Who Was Terry Watanabe?
Watanabe made his circumstances building up his father’s modest trade in business, oriental person Trading Co., into a companionship with revenues of $300 billion a year. He exited inwards 2000, marketing his total post in the business concern to private equity unbendable Brentwood Associates. Now real wealthy indeed, he decided to devote the quietus of his lifespan to philanthropy. Notably, he donated millions to AIDs research.
But without the byplay that had consumed his lifetime upwardly until that point, Watanabe before long became bored. He started gambling at Harrah’s Council Bluffs inward Iowa, eventually making his way of life to Las Vegas as a unfathomed dependence place in.
Watanabe moved into the Wynn Las Vegas, but his prodigious play caught the eye of then-CEO Steve Wynn, who prohibited him for being a “gambling freak and alcoholic.” That’s according to a alphabetic character written past Wynn’s attorney to the Silver State Gaming Control Board.
The deuce Caesars casinos were more accommodating. In fact, they dead set(p) o'er backwards to get Watanabe at their gaming tables, showering him with Rolling Stones tickets and $500,000 credit at the gift stores.
Caesars regular created a special outrank on its trueness computer program only when for him, “Chairman.” Previously, the highest VIP rank had been “Seven Star.”
$5M Sessions
In 2007, the yr of his jaw-dropping losing streak, Watanabe was bingeing at the tables for upwards to 24 hours, sometimes losing as often as $5 one thousand thousand inwards a single session. Sometimes he played iii hands of twenty-one simultaneously, with a $50,000 point of accumulation for to each one hand, according to court documents.
Watanabe claimed inwards court that Caesars plied him with booze and prescription pills to keep him gambling, something the operator denied. The company generated around 5.6% of its gambling revenue from Watanabe that year.
In 2017, Watanabe, now broke, started a GoFundMe take the field to assist him wage increase $100,000 for a life-saving prostate malignant neoplastic disease operation.
“I’ve recognised my state of affairs and I doh non shame myself,” he wrote. “But my hope is that you testament bump it inward your nerve to forgive me for my past times and facilitate me live long plenty to assist others in the future.”