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Tech billionaires are emerging as Hollywood’s hottest antiheroes. This autumn, four films are hitting screens, focusing on some of Silicon Valley’s most influential and controversial figures: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Elizabeth Holmes, Axios reports.

Hollywood’s portrayal of Silicon Valley and its leaders is becoming increasingly dark, as negative headlines about the tech industry gradually seep into popular culture.

Where tech executives were once depicted as brilliant, if imperfect, innovators, they are now increasingly portrayed as frightening villains whose ambitions may do more harm than good.

From Zuckerberg to Altman: Four Films Exploring the Dark Side of Big Tech

This autumn’s releases about tech billionaires span a range of genres, from documentaries to thrillers.

• ** The Social Reckoning.** The follow-up to Aaron Sorkin’s 2010 film The Social Network opened in cinemas on Friday. Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, who is portrayed in a darker light against the backdrop of the 2021 leak of internal Facebook documents, which followed revelations by former company employee Frances Haugen. Sorkin has, however, taken some artistic liberties, altering the timeline and other details.

• ** Musk.** A four-hour documentary chronicling Elon Musk’s rise is screening in select cinemas and goes into nationwide release on Friday. The film was directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney. Its journey to audiences has been a roller-coaster ride: after a positive reception at the Venice Film Festival, Musk’s team responded with legal threats.

• ** You Can See Everything.** An experimental documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim opens on Friday. It focuses on former Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes in the final weeks before she is sent to prison. Studio A24 describes the film as “an intimate portrait of an enigmatic criminal” that becomes a breathtaking three-year journey into the abyss.

• ** Artificial.** Luca Guadagnino’s drama, starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, is due to hit screens at Christmas. According to The Verge, Altman is portrayed as a manipulator and power-hungry psychopath who lies as easily as he breathes and is willing to use anyone, anywhere and at any time to achieve his goals. Studio NEON describes the film as a story about OpenAI and the two-decade race to develop artificial intelligence. As the technology becomes increasingly powerful and valuable, a struggle for control intensifies over an innovation capable of changing humanity’s destiny.

These projects stand in stark contrast to earlier films and documentaries about Silicon Valley, such as Jobs and Something Ventured, which celebrated the ingenuity of company founders and venture capitalists.

“It was a passionate love affair with technology,” says Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington historian who studies Silicon Valley. “And when love ends, it ends very quickly.”

According to O’Mara, public perceptions of Silicon Valley and the products it creates have changed dramatically.

Hollywood is reflecting growing public disillusionment with the tech industry.

“Popular cinema reflects the social anxieties of its time,” says J. M. Tyree, a writer and editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly. Today, he argues, people are concerned about power becoming concentrated in the hands of a few at the expense of the many.

Why Tech Billionaires Make Such Convincing Villains

Tech company founders are particularly compelling subjects for screen stories, Tyree believes. Their public personas combine two classic archetypes: the ruthless businessman corrupted by greed, as seen in Citizen Kane and The Wolf of Wall Street, and the mad scientist with questionable morals who recklessly exploits scientific and technological advances, as in Metropolis and Frankenstein.

The eccentricity of tech moguls makes them even more fascinating characters for audiences.

Historian Margaret O’Mara sums it up succinctly: “One thing I’ve learned from studying the history of rich people is that extreme wealth makes people weird.”

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