Exclusive | Gold & Greed doc revisits real-life deadly treasure hunt: Most pitched project of the last 20 years in Hollywood

X marks the spot. The Netflix documentary “Gold & Greed: The Hunt For Fenn’s Treasure” (now streaming) covers the wild tale of a real-life deadly treasure hunt – and, it sets up a surprise second treasure hunt. “Within the TV and film industry, this might have been the most pitched project of the last 20 years,” director Jared McGilliard exclusively told The Post. “You had this grand story of this amazing treasure hunt out there in the vast Rocky Mountains.But until it’s found, it’s kind of the story of a bunch of people walking around the woods, without an ending,” he continued.

“So, I had known about it for a long time, but hadn’t pursued it in terms of a story until the day it was announced it was found.” In 2010, Forrest Fenn – an eccentric Santa Fe, New Mexico millionaire art dealer who died at age 90 in 2020 – hid a cache of gold and jewels in the woods. It was a 42-pound chest loaded with pre-Columbian gold artifacts, ancient Chinese jade carvings and antique coins, worth over $1 million.He left clues about its location in a poem (in his self-published memoir “The Thrill of the Chase”).For a decade, hundreds of thousands of real-life “treasure hunters” swarmed the American West, hiking the woods to search for the chest, until medical student Jack Stuef found it in Wyoming in 2020. “Gold and Greed” follows the story, including its darker parts. Five treasure hunters died over the decade that the search was playing out, leading to public outcries that Fenn should call off the treasure hunt. Fenn also kept Stuef’s name anonymous and didn’t release details of how or where Stuef found the treasure – leading to many angry treasure hunters forming conspiracy theories in YouTube videos and online message boards as they doubted the finder’s claim.

When Fenn died just days after vaguely announcing that it had been found, hunters also harassed Fenn’s daughter and grandson about it after his death. “The...