Peak TV
Jesse Armstrong trades media moguls for tech titans in Mountainhead. The Succession creator tells DQ about this timely, dystopian feature-length drama, reuniting with some familiar faces and directing his first major project. Award-winning film and television writer Jesse Armstrong is best known as the man behind HBO’s hugely acclaimed darkly satirical drama Succession, while he also wrote The Entire History of You, one of the standout episodes of dystopian anthology series Black Mirror. Now, with Mountainhead, the influence of both projects can be found in this story of four tech billionaires postulating about taking over the world while civil unrest spreads across the globe thanks to the rampant rise of AI-generated videos. Written by Armstrong, the HBO film also marks his first major directing credit. It opens as Randall (Steve Carrell), Venis (Cory Michael Smith) and Jeff (Ramy Youssef) gather at a mountain retreat belonging to Hugo, aka Souper (Jason Schwartzman). But as the ‘Brewsters’ reunite for a boys weekend, they can’t take their eyes off their phones. That’s because they’re sharing constant updates from social media while countries around the world become engulfed by political turmoil, panic buying, stock market crashes and outbreaks of violence – events attributed to new “content tools” released by Venis’s own platform, Traam, that have been used to spread misinformation through generative AI and deepfake videos. As it happens, Jeff has developed software that can identify AI-generated content – but will he sell his “filter for nightmares” to Venis? A blend of satirical comedy … Continue reading Peak TV
