With ‘Mountainhead,’ Jesse Armstrong Out-Successions ‘Succession’: “How Far Can I Push This?”

Jesse Armstrong doesn’t imagine in evil—he thinks. “I think everyone behaves like they do for reasons which you could eventually get to the bottom of,” the prolific author and manufacturer says. For 4 deliciously diabolical seasons, Armstrong examined his idea via exploring the machinations and internal psyches of the no less than evil-adjacent Roy circle of relatives on Succession. His new HBO movie Mountainhead, which premiered May 31, explores it as soon as once more, this time with tech-bro autocrats.

Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman play Randall, Jeff, Venis (pronounced like “Venice,” now not “Venus”), and Hugo—all hugely a success tech marketers, all value greater than 1000000000 bucks. (Except mere hundred-thousandaire Hugo, whom the others name “Souper,” brief for “Soup Kitchen.”) While they acquire for a boys weekend, the sector outdoor Hugo’s palatial property is somewhat actually falling aside. Governments are collapsing, shares are crashing, and ratings and ratings of individuals are demise—all as a result of unregulated AI era that Venis is without delay liable for unleashing into the sector.

Believe it or now not, Mountainhead is Armstrong’s primary directorial debut. Although he took house 4 Emmys for writing and developing Succession, Armstrong by no means directed an episode of the sequence—although he did imagine it. “It’s impossible time-wise to do the writing I needed to do and also direct one,” Armstrong says. He additionally had a slight dose of imposter syndrome. “Mark Mylod had been such a close collaborator and a valued one, and he often did the finales,” he says. To suggest himself as a director “felt kind of presumptuous and rude; I worried I wouldn’t do as good a job as he would.”

For Mountainhead, he put his fears apart. “I know the tone, I know what I want to get. It’s not doing Game of Thrones. You have some helicopters, but not even that many helicopters,” he says. Maybe he’d have had extra if the movie hadn’t been made so briefly. Armstrong pitched the movie to HBO president Casey Bloys in December; he wrote the script in January, and so they shot on location in March, modifying as they went alongside ahead of wrapping in early April. But Armstrong sees the truncated timeline as a blessing in conceal. “I was anxious about directing for the first time. Not having too much time to reconsider or worry actually felt like kind of an advantage,” he says. “I wasn’t going to read so many interviews with great directors. I wasn’t going to get paralyzed.”

On the skin, Randall, Jeff, Venis, and Souper appear identical—exorbitantly rich (most commonly) white, (apparently) instantly males who’ve miraculously made it to the highest in their fields. But Armstrong is aware of that now not all tech marketers are constructed alike—even though they use the similar jargon and put on the similar fleeces. “Everybody’s different,” he says. “On a dumb writing level, you’ve got the dad, the favorite son, the usurper who’s going to take his position, and the guy who’s just clinging on by fingernails. You’ve got these archetypes.”

Of direction, it’s extra sophisticated than that. And although every persona brings real-world parallels to thoughts, none is an ideal have compatibility for anyone infamous tech bro. Carell’s project capitalist, Randall, inspires each Peter Thiel, the billionaire who as soon as expressed hobby in a tradition involving the transfusion of blood from a more youthful particular person as a way of making improvements to well being and doubtlessly reversing getting older, and Bryan Johnson, the biohacker whose dedication to slowing down the getting older procedure has led him to check his midnight erections with the ones of his teenage son.

Youseff’s Jeff brings to thoughts Sam Bankman-Fried—the younger gun crypto king serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted on seven counts associated with fraud and cash laundering—and Open AI founder Sam Altman, although he’s additionally located as essentially the most ethical billionaire. Cory Michael Smith’s Venis, the richest and maximum amoral of all, is an amalgam of Meta’s geek became hypebeast Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. Souper? Well, he’s simply Souper.

“Because I wasn’t making a biographical or documentary representation of this world, I could just take a bit of, like, ‘Oh, that was weird when Sam Bankman-Fried said that,’” Armstrong says. “It was weird when Sam Altman said that, and Marc Andreessen seems to have a real big hang-up about this.” Some tech personalities gave him extra subject material than others. “Obviously, Elon is so big in all of our minds at the moment. There’s a lot of him scattered around the different people. And Zuck as well. You could take different parts of their characters and sequestrate them away and create these amalgams that seem to work.”