Professor David Henry Hwang is leading the creation of Billion Dollar Whale, a new television series from SK Global and Westward, which Hwang is adapting from the bombshell book of the same name. Hwang also serves as Executive Producer on the show alongside Film alumnus and co-founder of Westward Productions, Beau Willimon '03 (CC '99)—and those aren't the only Columbia connections. Nearly all the members of the show's producing and writing teams are Columbia alumni, many of them graduates of the Theatre Program.
Dramaturgy alumna Anchuli Felicia King ’18 is another executive producer for the series, and Adjunct Assistant Professor Rogelio Martinez '96 is a co-producer. Working closely with Hwang in the writers' room are Playwriting alums Daniel Rattner '20 and Luz Lorenzana Twigg '23—who serve as Writer's Assistant and Production Assistant, respectively—and Sylvia Khoury (CC '12), who serves as Story Editor. Both Twigg and Rattner studied under Hwang, and Twigg was recently published alongside Hwang in Decentered Playwriting, a theatre textbook.
Written by Wall Street Journal correspondents Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, Billion Dollar Whale details the exploits of Malaysian fugitive businessman Jho Low, who manipulated the Malaysian Prime Minister at the time to create a sovereign wealth fund that Low was able to exploit for his own interests. The fraud is considered one of the largest in history and Low is under investigation by authorities in Malaysia, Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland, and by the U.S. Department of Justice. The book was a bestseller and made its writers finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize
