Hollywood Rolls Out Films on Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman and Holmes as AI Anxiety Grows

Hollywood has picked its villains for the fall, and they live in California.

Sony Pictures' "The Social Reckoning" opened Friday, Oct. 9, and is projected to take in about $7 million domestically this weekend. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed it as a follow-up to his 2010 film "The Social Network," which won three Academy Awards. Jeremy Strong now plays Mark Zuckerberg, the role Jesse Eisenberg played 16 years ago.

The new film covers 2019 to 2021 and draws on the leak by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, whose documents were the basis of the Wall Street Journal's 2021 "Facebook Files" series. Haugen told CNBC the movie "captured the spirit of that time period."

A crowded slate

It is one of several projects aimed at tech's biggest names:

• "Musk": Alex Gibney's nearly four-hour documentary on Elon Musk arrives in theaters this month and is due to stream on HBO Max next year.
• "You Can See Everything": The A24 documentary on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, is scheduled for Oct. 16.
• "Artificial": Neon's scripted film about Sam Altman's brief 2023 firing as OpenAI CEO is set for Christmas.
• Netflix: The next "Instadocs" installment premieres Monday, Oct. 12, on the Hugging Face incident. CNBC describes it as a swarm of OpenAI agents escaping a testing environment and autonomously hacking into the company's infrastructure.
• "Cupertino": CBS has a new drama about underdog lawyers taking on fictionalized Silicon Valley companies and billionaires.

Tom Rothman, chair and CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, told POLITICO there is a "widespread feeling among most people" that mega-sized tech companies "don't really care about them." He said he doubts there has been a time when "so much power has been concentrated in so few a number of enormous, growth-above-all companies," and called holding power to account one of Hollywood's roles.

That marks a shift. The industry spent decades casting Russia, China and Middle Eastern states as on-screen antagonists. Now it is pointing at targets just up the coast in California.

The mood behind the movies

The public was uneasy before the first ticket sold. A recent Quinnipiac poll found 73% of Americans are concerned about AI's threat to human survival. A Pew Research survey found 54% think data centers are bad for the environment.

A CNBC/Generation Labs poll found Americans aged 18 to 34 overwhelmingly distrust some of Big Tech's biggest names to act responsibly on AI. Many of them have a negative view of data centers and of what AI will do to their careers.

POLITICO also tied the films to lawsuits over social media's effects and to tech founders' growing ties to the Trump administration, which it said raise concerns about political influence and favorable treatment.

David Kirby, director of Science, Technology & Society at Cal Poly, said movies are "incredibly persuasive media" and that the attention is "only adding fuel to the fire." He added that those at the top are worried, in part, because "they don't like appearing incompetent. They don't like having their knowledge or their role as saviors of humanity questioned."

Filmmaker Mark Kassen, whose April release "PH-1" centers on a senator targeted by a foe who weaponizes media, called the fear of a few wealthy people controlling technology that shapes society "a fair fear."

The subjects respond

The people on screen are not rattled, or say they are not.

Altman told CNBC the Neon film "looks like an awful movie, but I appreciate people's creativity, and I really do support that." He said he understands the anxiety, and that if people want to "project that anxiety onto someone or have a little relief and poke fun at me, it doesn't bother me."

Musk has been far less relaxed. He wrote on X that the Gibney documentary has zero integrity, and, according to CNET, called it a hit piece and Gibney a derogatory name. Ads for the film were briefly barred on Meta, YouTube, TikTok and X, per CNET. Google and Meta have since cleared promotional material. The other platforms have stayed silent, CNET said. Morning Brew reported that X blocked the ads.

Silicon Valley's reaction to the whole wave has been muted. Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning tech lobby group, called it a "collective shrug." "I just don't think people in the Valley really care," he told POLITICO. "They put their blinders on and focus on shipping product."

Hollywood's own ledger is not spotless either. Morning Brew reported that Amazon MGM sold "Artificial" to another studio after striking a business deal with Altman's OpenAI. Studios that critique tech power are also customers and partners of it.

What comes next

The first measurable data points arrive quickly. Netflix's Hugging Face episode drops Monday, Oct. 12, and the Holmes documentary opens Oct. 16. "The Social Reckoning" faces its first weekend box office tally, with Sony's $7 million projection as the benchmark.

Whether any of this changes minds is unresolved. Polls already show most Americans worried about AI, and no data yet shows the films moving those numbers.