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A steely-eyed creature sits in its lair, dark clouds looming in the distance. Several prisoners tentatively enter, gathering the courage to deliver their meagre offerings to the unflinching force before them. The offering doesn\u2019t suffice. With one severe glance, the creature has the prisoners fleeing, desperately hoping they need not return.<\/p>\n
This sounds like a scene from a horror film \u2013 the introduction of Hollywood\u2019s newest flesh-eating beast. But this isn\u2019t your average monster. It\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook\u2019s co-founder and Meta chief executive. In Aaron Sorkin\u2019s The Social Reckoning<\/a>, the tech billionaire is the evil that lurks, the monster under the bed. But instead of a lair, he\u2019s in a sterile office, emotionlessly watching overworked employees present dissatisfying statistics.<\/p>\n The film, a follow-up to 2010\u2019s The Social Network (also penned by Sorkin<\/a>), asks us to reconsider the definition of \u201cmonster\u201d, suggesting it\u2019s not fanged creatures and slasher killers we should be afraid of, but rather tech bro billionaires and their unbridled, unchecked power.<\/p>\n Set around the 2021 Facebook Files<\/a> leak, Zuckerberg is no longer the arrogant tech nerd portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network. Now, played by Jeremy Strong (Succession), he\u2019s a robotic, dictatorial techpreneur, intent on increasing Facebook\u2019s engagement even if it means intensifying hate speech, spreading misinformation and damaging mental health.<\/p>\n The suggestion of safeguards, which could drop engagement by just one per cent, offends him. When urged to fact-check political ads on the social platform, he refuses, adamant that tech companies shouldn\u2019t operate as arbiters of truth. Facebook, to him, is a corkboard \u2013 he can\u2019t control what people pin to it.<\/p>\n Sorkin insists his Zuckerberg is an \u201canti-hero\u201d<\/a> rather than a villain, a person with good intentions but poor carry-through. However, Strong\u2019s unfeeling lizard-like performance suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n The Social Reckoning is the first of several new movies to turn tech bros monstrous. Andrew Garfield will portray Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, in Luca Guadagnino\u2019s Artificial, landing January 21. Tracking the early development of artificial intelligence, the film\u2019s trailer<\/a> reads like a psychological horror, as Garfield\u2019s Altman descends into a grim basement filled with guns.<\/p>\n \u201cWe open Pandora\u2019s Box together, the future is inevitable,\u201d Garfield\u2019s Altman says of AI in the trailer. \u201cCountries will fall, industries are going to collapse, and we get to be the ones to shepherd people into this new world.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to watch without shuddering, knowing that AI has been used to hack into government systems<\/a> and to mislead using deepfakes<\/a> and chatbot hallucinations. A former employee from AI safety and research firm Anthropic even warned that AI companies are \u201cgambling with our lives\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Garfield has acknowledged the insidiousness, telling Variety<\/a> he no longer uses ChatGPT. \u201cI got a bit scared \u2026 I felt a little mistrusting of the technology. It feels like the people who are encouraging us to use the technologies don\u2019t exactly know its capacities themselves. That feels a little irresponsible\u201d.<\/p>\n Fellow OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has also attracted Hollywood\u2019s attention. Alex Gibney\u2019s Musk, a nearly four-hour documentary yet to set an Australian release, traces the tech billionaire\u2019s stint in government and ownership of SpaceX, Tesla and X. Musk\u2019s power is so immense that he\u2019s described in the documentary\u2019s teaser trailer<\/a> as the \u201cEarth\u2019s most unchecked man\u201d and, more concerningly, a \u201cnuke\u201d.<\/p>\n Boasting a net worth of nearly $US1 trillion<\/a>, Musk is the world\u2019s richest person, and with such wealth comes great power. Musk\u2019s lawyers threatened to file a defamation suit<\/a> ahead of the film\u2019s release, though no suit has officially been filed.<\/p>\n Artificial, meanwhile, was dropped by Amazon in June shortly after the company signed a lucrative deal with OpenAI<\/a>. Coincidence? Luckily, Neon picked it up. Similarly, Sony reportedly received a \u201cstrongly worded letter\u201d<\/a> from Meta after it caught wind of The Social Reckoning. Though these films will land on screens, they\u2019ve had to fight to get there.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most anticipated \u201ctech monster\u201d to hit cinemas is Elizabeth Holmes. The disgraced Theranos founder<\/a>, who\u2019s currently in prison, will be the focus of You Can See Everything, a documentary by Nathan Fielder (The Rehearsal) and Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven) landing on November 12. Though only acquitted for defrauding investors, Holmes\u2019 work on the failed blood-testing startup \u2013 which provided inaccurate and unreliable blood tests \u2013 could have eventually cost lives.<\/p>\n Yet in the documentary\u2019s trailer, Holmes insists she did nothing wrong and has \u201cnothing to hide\u201d whilst staring, unblinking, at Fielder, as if trying to consume him with her eyes alone. It\u2019s arguably scarier than any horror film as this is a real person, who has done terrible things for the sake of money and success, and who still fails to acknowledge their ethical shortcomings.<\/p>\n This is where today\u2019s tech monsters differ from tech bros of the past. Eisenberg\u2019s Mountainhead (2025), a film about four fictional tech tycoons isolating from an economic disaster in a secluded cabin, makes light of their buffoonish behaviour and ineptitude. Jemaine Clement\u2019s tech mogul antagonist in M3GAN 2.0 (2025) is a mash-up of Silicon Valley figures, thus explaining his larger-than-life performance that can hardly be taken seriously. Australian director Leigh Whannell\u2019s The Invisible Man was arguably ahead of the curve in 2020, featuring an exaggeratedly evil tech boss who fakes his suicide and uses a camouflage suit to stalk his ex-partner.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, earlier films with real-life tech tycoons, such as The Social Network and Steve Jobs, depicted them more generously. Zuckerberg was a misguided nerd; Jobs was an obsessive genius. Even the fictionalised series about Holmes, The Dropout, showed her dancing to Lil Wayne<\/a> at one point. They were flawed, but certainly didn\u2019t appear to have the capacity to end the world.<\/p>\n It seems we can no longer hide behind such levity and fiction. From The Social Reckoning to Artificial, today\u2019s tech bro films are beyond bleak. They capture periods that felt like rock bottom, such as when extremists (many of whom were radicalised on Facebook) stormed the US Capitol<\/a>. Yet, things have only gotten worse.<\/p>\n While earlier films warned of what may come, these films scream: \u201cIt\u2019s too late\u201d. That\u2019s scarier than any masked killer or bloodthirsty beast.<\/p>\n The Social Reckoning is in cinemas now. You Can See Everything will land in cinemas on November 12 and Artificial on January 21.<\/p>\n![\"From](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/c4ab2a174fe3d5cb4854fa0f46eaa49aff44b72e703f7f5ec864303ecdeff68f.gif\")
From The Social Reckoning to Artificial, today\u2019s tech bros appear more monstrous than ever.<\/p>\n![\"Jeremy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4d04cd9681daa3ce42a8cf338e8dfbf4125265aa.jpeg\")
Jeremy Strong\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg is more \u201cevil lizard man\u201d than arrogant anti-hero.Sony Pictures via AP<\/p>\n![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/b7afba2bcfbd18040c034d2e4ce52a211380655b.jpeg\")
Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever in Artificial.Yannis Drakoulidis<\/p>\n![\"Elizabeth](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/0d99991b2fe18771b4fe8855960863a3e99e99b5.jpeg\")
Elizabeth Holmes\u2019 stare is beyond unsettling in the trailer for\u00a0You Can See Everything.YouTube<\/p>\n![\"Jesse](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/456f9d4fb5481ddc7f08c5a1e69e4147c049bd0d.jpeg\")
Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg was more twerpy than evil.Sony<\/p>\n