David Farnor | On 10, Sep 2013

Bloomberg Businessweek isn’t a name you associate with cinema, but the company has announced that its new documentary film “HANK: Five Years From the Brink” will launch exclusively on Netflix on September 16th 2013. The film, co-produced by Bloomberg Businessweek and RadicalMedia, features former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and is timed to the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the start of the global financial crisis.

HANK: Five Years From the Brink is directed by Academy Award and seven-time Emmy nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger, whose documentaries include the critically acclaimed Brother’s Keeper, the Paradise Lost trilogy, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Crude. The film marks the debut production from Bloomberg Businessweek Films, a newly launched initiative that will “seek out visual, complex, and emotionally rewarding business stories” as original producers.

For three weeks in September 2008, Hank Paulson was the one person charged with preventing the collapse of the U.S. economy. In “HANK: Five Years from the Brink,” Paulson tells the complete story of how he worked to persuade banks, members of congress, and presidential candidates to sign off on nearly $1 trillion in bailouts—even as he found the behavior that led to the crisis, and the bailouts themselves, morally reprehensible. Paulson also details here why another fiscal crisis is inevitable.

“We love bringing thought-provoking documentaries to our members and so to be the premiere home for ‘HANK: Five Years From the Brink’ is a thrill for us,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos.

“We’re honored to have ‘HANK’ seen on such an innovative platform as Netflix, and incredibly fortunate to have been able to partner with the great Joe Berlinger on this documentary,” said Bloomberg Businessweek editor and producer, Josh Tyrangiel, who is leading the Bloomberg Businessweek Films initiative.

“As a documentary filmmaker for over 20 years, it’s really exciting to find novel ways to reach audiences with a new content creator like Bloomberg Businessweek Films, through an expanding powerhouse like Netflix,” said director and producer Joe Berlinger.

To see the collapse through Paulson’s eyes “sheds new light on both the crisis that was, and the depression that could have been” Netflix said in an official statement.

We’ll find out if that’s true on September 16th, when it is made available to subscribers in the UK, Canada, USA and Ireland. The remaining territories will get the film on November 1st.

Add to Watchlist