Wu-Tang Clan’s Secret Album Saga Gets New Netflix Trailer

Wu-Tang Clan‘s one-copy album gets a new look in Netflix’s trailer for The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable, released Monday before the documentary’s October 16 streaming debut.

The film follows Tarik Azzougarh, the Dutch-Moroccan rapper and producer known as Cilvaringz, from fan to collaborator. His place in Wu-Tang’s world led to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the album sold as a single physical copy for a reported $2 million in 2015.

The trailer puts the project’s art-world ambitions against the anger of fans who wanted to hear the music. Its speakers compare the single-copy plan to the Mona Lisa, question selling the record to the highest bidder and revisit the fallout from that choice.

RZA, an executive producer, describes Cilvaringz’s path in a statement accompanying the film.

“There’s very few cases where a fan actually gets to stand beside the man and add onto the man’s legacy,” RZA said.

That relationship developed well before the auction. Cilvaringz signed with RZA’s Razor Sharp Records, toured with Wu-Tang and produced tracks before assembling the 31-song project through years of recording sessions in Europe.

The idea was to give recorded music the value and rarity of a physical artwork. But that goal came with a cost for listeners: the original deal barred a commercial release until 2103.

Method Man challenged how the album had been presented to Wu-Tang’s members in 2024. He told Vanity Fair they had been paid to record songs without being told those verses would become this project.

“We were never told what it was. It was never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album,” he said.

Martin Shkreli purchased the record in 2015, then lost it through forfeiture tied to his securities-fraud conviction. The Justice Department sold the album in July 2021 and applied the proceeds toward his roughly $7.4 million forfeiture judgment.

PleasrDAO bought the record in 2021. In June 2024, the group told Decrypt it had secured rights to 16 of the 31 tracks. It announced a $1 digital sale designed to unlock portions of the music over time.

Director Joanna Natasegara found her way into the story after meeting Cilvaringz while vacationing in Morocco. At the film’s Sundance premiere in January, she said she already knew about the album but hadn’t known his role or how it came together.

The documentary marks Natasegara’s feature directing debut. Netflix begins streaming The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable on Friday, October 16.