Hollywood's Latest Films Cast Zuckerberg, Musk and Altman in a Dark Light

A wave of films is putting some of Big Tech's most powerful figures under scrutiny, and the portraits are largely unflattering, according to CNBC. Three titles lead the way: Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning on Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Gibney's documentary Musk on Elon Musk, and Luca Guadagnino's Artificial on Sam Altman. They arrive as public concern grows over AI and the data centers that power it.

Zuckerberg. Sony's The Social Reckoning opens this weekend. It is a follow-up in spirit to Sorkin's 2010 film The Social Network, but it focuses on the 2021 leak by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who exposed internal company documents. Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg after Jesse Eisenberg, who played him in 2010, declined to return, Yahoo reports. The film is projected to open to around $7 million, and Forbes reports it holds a 56% score on Rotten Tomatoes from 178 reviews. Zuckerberg has not publicly responded to his portrayal, and you can read about its box office start in our opening report.

Musk. Gibney's documentary Musk has drawn strong reviews, and Forbes reports that The Hollywood Reporter praised it while describing a deeply unsettling portrait of its subject. Ahead of its release, Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro sent Gibney a letter warning of possible legal action over a segment in which Musk's ex Ashley St. Clair implies he used Starlink to rig the 2024 election. The letter says the insinuation is false and that Starlink was not connected to vote tabulation, according to TNND. Forbes reports that Musk has called the film a hit piece. Musk is also suing OpenAI and Altman over the company's shift to a for-profit structure.

Altman. Neon will release Artificial at Christmas. Andrew Garfield plays Altman in a drama about his brief removal as OpenAI's chief executive in 2023. Musk is also portrayed, along with other AI figures including Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei, Forbes reports. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival, and Altman was critical of it in a Vanity Fair interview earlier this week.

Mother Jones notes that the 2010s wave of tech biopics, such as The Social Network, largely portrayed difficult, ambitious people, while this group of films takes a more critical view. CNBC asks whether the portrayals could shape how audiences see the men themselves.

These are the filmmakers' interpretations, and several of the subjects dispute them. The debate over AI is also on filmmakers' minds off screen, as in Ben Affleck's recent remarks.