WeCrashed Trailer: Jared Leto, Anne Hathaway Killed As Former CEOs of WeWork

In WeCrash, Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway become the latest to enter the world of sensational tech stories as they take on the roles of Adam and Rebekah Neumann, whose visions are sometimes incoherent. helped make WeWork’s name on everyone’s lips before it all fell apart. A new trailer for the show, which premiered March 18 on Apple TV Plus, captures a moment of the company’s dizzying growth.

Full disclosure: from 2014 to 2015, I worked at WeWork in a low-level position, where I met both Adam and Rebekah. In 2021, I had a brief email exchange with a writer and producer of WeCrashed, who wants to know if I can endorse a story from 2017. I can’t and that’s all interactive. But from personal experience, I can say that Leto and Hathaway are quite convincing. Leto’s Israeli accent is more standard and his hair is the right length. (Neumann’s hair is important to his mythology, which states that as a long-haired Israelite he bears a striking resemblance to Jesus.) Early animations show what Neumann’s main strength is: make someone believe in his vision, if only long enough for them. to write checks.

WeCrash certainly delves into the rudimentary economics based on Adam’s vision, as well as the debauchery of WeWork’s Summer Camp retreats (“debauchery”, in my personal experience, means mimosas endless, a terrible Chainsmokers concert, pretty good Weekdays concerts, and more cocaine than I’ve ever seen). But WeCrash also a final part to the story of Adam and Rebekah. The show was adapted from a podcast and their story has also been turned into many podcasts, documentaries, and books, like Our sect by Eliot Brown and Billion dollar loser by Reeves Wiedeman. Now, the story has probably reached its final form in a TV show.

It is not the only one. Showtime’s miniseries this year Super pump also coming out of its cocoon is a well-reported book by Mike Isaac and into a beautiful butterfly in showtime form, where Joseph Gordon-Levitt will take on the role of former Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick.

And then there’s Bad blood, John Carreyrou’s 2018 book, is said to be responsible for today’s trend of discovering tech CEOs that are collapsing. While already the subject of a documentary, Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, recently convicted of federal fraud, will be the subject of not one but two TV shows this year. Yes Dropout on Hulu, featuring Amanda Seyfried and based on a podcast, and also a straight adaptation of Bad blood coming to Apple TV, directed by Adam McKay and starring Jennifer Lawrence, who seems to have started work change her voice for the role.

What’s behind the haste of CEOs who act badly on screen? A few things, not least important of which was the fact that the CEOs acted terribly. As washington articles noted after the jury found Holmes guilty, the US has “a history of building up its business leaders and tearing them down quickly when they’re accused of misconduct,” stretching from Enron to financial crash of 2008, then was covered in movies like Margin call and The Big Short.

Turning real-life characters into fictional versions places unique constraints on their stories. Being a Youtuber Patrick Willems discussed when watching a musical biopic, the inclusion of a real person in the film is forced to tell about their life. The same can be said of podcasts or books, but both of those formats allow for a bit more space to delve into complex or contradictory details.

A podcast can have extra episodes, a book can have footnotes, but no sidebars within visual narration. The challenge is to get all the information on the screen while engaging the viewer. Adam McKay did so in The Big Short, and it will be up to these programs to do the same.

The market for these upcoming shows is most likely people who have heard about these stories but have never bothered to read them again themselves, with the help of people who have read these stories in depth. and want more. Of course, those who weren’t interested before may still not, and those who have learned about the chaos of technology may already have their attention.

There is also the risk of appearing programs like WeCrash and Super pump become interchangeable, with all these charismatic CEOs coming together for a mouthwatering stew. And for those who want to make their mark on the universe, as Steve Jobs once said, that could be the worst fate.