Kaleidoscope: The True Story That Inspired the Netflix Series!!
Kaleidoscope was added to the Netflix catalog, January 1, 2023: the true story that inspired Eric Garcia’s series is linked to Hurricane Sandy, one of the largest cyclones to hit the east coast of the United States. In 2012, Sandy made landfall on Caribbean islands, including Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, reaching New York on October 29. In the Big Apple, it flooded streets, tunnels, subway lines and some buildings, including that of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation.
Kaleidoscope: The True Story That Inspired the Netflix Series
Eric Garcia, in an interview published in Consequence, explained that the idea for Kaleidoscope came to him by reading some articles published by newspapers in the aftermath of the hurricane. Newspapers, print and online, carried statements by the executives of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation. “I was struck by the story of these bonds that disappeared during Hurricane Sandy, it read ’70 billion dollars may have been lost’. $70 billion, 7-0, that’s a crazy number,” Garcia said– Then a week later they’re like, ‘Oh, we delved into that. There are not that many. Maybe 10 million have been lost.’ And then a week later they declared, “nothing happened.” I always thought there was something unclear, something to take inspiration from.
The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation is a financial services company, in its vault were, and are, kept thousands of stock certificates, bonds, insurance certificates, and other financial credit instruments. In the aftermath of the hurricane, executives said the flooding of the offices had destroyed these paper financial records. Two weeks later, the top management of the company reassured the investors by stating that 99% of the documents had been stored electronically, so that the damages, from the initial 70 million dollars, were reduced to pennies.
Kaleidoscope presents a big change from other series, adopting what Netflix calls “a non-linear approach to storytelling”. In practice, the subscriber to the streaming platform can choose the order in which to follow the story, the only constraint, of course, being to leave “Blanco” for last, the eighth episode of this anthological project. The cast of Kaleidoscope sees Giancarlo Esposito in the role of a professional thief around whom a team of thieves is formed. Alongside him, we find Paz Vega, Rosaline Elbay, Peter Mark Kendall, Niousha Jafarian, Sammy Peralta, Bubba Weiler, Hans Tester, Hemky Madera, Stacey Oristano and Soojeong Son.
The Kaleidoscope synopsis tells us that the series covers a 25-year narrative arc. The protagonists are a band of skilled thieves followed in their attempt to open a seemingly inviolable vault in order to obtain the greatest loot in history. Under the watchful eye of the world’s most powerful corporate security and law enforcement team, each episode reveals a piece of an elaborate puzzle of corruption, greed, revenge, schemes, alliances and betrayals.
