Jesse Armstrong says new Mountainhead film is ‘not an Elon Musk hit job'
The film will be Armstrong's first new project since comedy-drama series Succession concluded in 2023, and will see a group of billionaire friends working in tech get together amid a series of international crises.
Asked if he was able to avoid writing about the Tesla boss while making the movie by Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live, Armstrong said: 'Musk's obviously been really present, I've done this really quickly, I didn't start writing it until January.
'So it's not about Elon Musk, we have a sort of richest guy in the world character, but I think people would find some flavours of Mark Zuckerberg (Meta chief executive) and Sam Altman (OpenAI chief executive), and other less well known tech people in there as well.
'So it's not sort of a Musk hit job, it's trying to be a portrait of a group of people, who are so powerful, and maybe (have) a particular way of talking, and a particular way of thinking.'
Armstrong was also asked about the similarities between the characters in his new film and Succession, and whether they were more about power than rich people.
The 54-year-old British screenwriter and film producer replied: 'People have been saying why are you writing about these bloody rich people again?
'And maybe I've been seduced and I just like hanging around in… rooms that look like hotels, which is where most of the rich people, they seem to live.
'We did a lot of research and a lot of scouting locations, it's surprising how similar the spaces are.
'But I don't think I'm interested in the money as much as I am in the power of it, I didn't just want to write a rich people show in Succession.
'It was about about newspaper and news media, TV news power, and this is about tech power, about social media power, about AI power.'
Mountainhead's cast includes Steve Carell as Randall, Jason Schwartzman as Souper (Hugo Van Yalk), Cory Michael Smith as Venis, and Ramy Youssef as Jeff.
Succession was brought to an end in 2023 after four series of Scottish actor Brian Cox playing foul-mouthed global media tycoon and family patriarch Logan Roy, opposite Oscar nominee Jeremy Strong, Academy Award winner Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, and Alan Ruck as his children.
It scooped 19 Emmys including outstanding drama series and nine Golden Globes during its run, along with drawing large audiences and being critically well received.
Armstrong is also an Oscar nominee for co-writing The Thick Of It spin-off film In The Loop with Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche, and has won TV Baftas for his work on Peep Show and Succession.
Mountainhead will air for the first time on June 1, on Sky and streaming service Now.
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