The tech backlash is now in theaters

BetweenThe Social Reckoning,You Can See Everything,Musk, andArtificial, filmmakers are taking Big Tech to task.

Charles Pulliam-Moore

Oct 15, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

Image: A24

The tech backlash is now in theaters

BetweenThe Social Reckoning,You Can See Everything,Musk, andArtificial, filmmakers are taking Big Tech to task.

Charles Pulliam-Moore

Oct 15, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

Charles Pulliam-Moore

is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

Though movies about disruptive tech founders are nothing new, 2026 has been unusually stacked with features that take a much more critical look at how Silicon Valley is reshaping our reality.Aaron Sorkin’sThe Social Reckoningframes Mark Zuckerberg asa robotic villainwhose ambitions aredestabilizing society. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’sYou Can See Everythingpaints a damning picture ofTheranos founder Elizabeth Holmesas she prepares forher ongoing stint in prison. After years ofbeing widely celebratedas a visionary, you can see how the larger narrative around Elon Musk has shifted in projects likeAlex Gibney’sMuskdocumentary. And whileLuca Guadagnino’sArtificialis a dark comedy, it is also a character study thatmakes Sam Altman look like a manipulative sociopath.

Even though some of these movies are fictionalized dramas, each of them draws from the wealth of critical reporting that has revealed their subjects to be less-than-savory characters. You get the sense that these filmmakers are trying to tell stories that are meant to resonate with audiences whose views of Big Tech have long since begun to dim. But it also feels like some of Hollywood’s biggest studios are finally embracing the idea that the tech backlash isn’t letting up anytime soon.

Especially when you compare them toclassics likeThe Social Network, the latest wave of cinematic dramas based on Silicon Valley power struggles has been far less sympathetic to their central figures. David Fincher’s 2010 film starring Jesse Eisenberg presented Zuckerberg as a complicated and misunderstood savant, butThe Social Reckoningbuilds its story around the idea that the Facebook / Meta head is a man whose obsession with growth poses an existential threat to democracy. By focusing on the allegations leveled bywhistleblower Frances Haugen, the movie is able to highlight Zuckerberg’s public transformation into a powerfulexecutive who wields autocratic controlover a multibillion-dollar social media empire.

WhatThe Social Reckoninglacks in timeliness (The Wall Street Journalbegan reporting Haugen’s warnings in 2021) and stylistic flair, it makes up for in the way it connects Facebook / Meta’s past internal decisions to events that are still playing out in real time. The movie’s scenes that dig intoInstagram’s negative impacts on teens’ mental healthand the relationship betweenFacebook’s algorithm and the spread of misinformationfeel as if they’re speaking directly to present-day concerns about how much influence Meta has over people’s lives. Similarly, Gibney’sMuskdocumentary acts as both a chronicle of the xAI / SpaceX head’s past and an inquiry into why the public was ever willing to let Musk accrue so much power within governments across the world.

Musk’s response to Gibney’s film has been telling.X has blocked the feature from being advertisedon the platform, and Musk — a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” — hasthreatened to take legal action against Gibneyfor producing a “hit piece.” It wasn’t entirely surprising to see Musk personally badmouthing a project that casts him in a negative light, but it was curious to see theMuskads initially missing from other social media platforms, includingYouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Though the Meta subsidiaries and YouTube ultimately reversed their decisions, TikTok has stuck to its guns — which feels notable given the company’s indirect connections to the Trump administration by way of Skydance Corporation CEO David Ellison. David’s father — Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison — isa longtime Donald Trump supporterand one of the American billionaires who led the consortium of investors thatpurchased TikTok’s US business late last year. Ellison hasreportedly promised GibneythatMuskwill air on HBO (now a part of Skydance) sometime next January. The film is currently screening in select theaters, but it is hard to argue that it hasn’t had to deal with an unusual amount of outside interference in the weeks leading up to its release.

Guadagnino’sArtificial— which was originally going to be released by Amazon — also faced unexpected marketing challenges this year. The streaminggiant backed out of its deal to distribute the film this past June, just months after announcing that it was investing $50 billion in OpenAI. All of that made it seem very much likeAmazon and other studios financially involved with AI companiesmight be cooling on the idea of releasing projects critical of the technology’s creators. Now thatArtificialhas begun screening and people have a sense of how it takes Altman to task,it’s easy to see why Amazon didn’t want to have its name attached. More than anything else,thatdecision may be what convinces people to seeArtificialin theaters when it releases widely on December 25th, andOpenAI’s impending IPOcould make the movie’s messages about Altman feel that much more relevant.

What sets Fielder’sYou Can See Everythingapart from each of these other recent tech films is how direct a view it gives you into the actual life of its subject. The documentary’s production began well afterHolmes had already been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, and Fielder uses his access to grill her about why she doesn’t believe thatshe defrauded Theranos investors. Invited to live with Holmes and her partner William Evans in a rental home during the month before she was set to begin her sentence, Fielder allows himself to become a character who can’t entirely tell whether his hosts’ supposed wish for radical transparency is genuine.

That central tension turnsYou Can See Everythinginto a surprisingly fascinating watch that challenges you to consider who’s actually in control of the documentary. Throughout the movie, Fielder repeatedly wonders if Holmes is using him as part ofher recent PR campaign, and he leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions.

It often feels like Fielder is asking viewers to really listen to how Holmes presents herself on camera and then reconcile that person with what you might have read about Holmes in the news orseen in Hulu’sThe Dropout. Whether or not Holmes is really just a committed performer who’s trying to manipulate the public shapes every beat of the film, and it makesYou Can See Everythingfeel like a truly in-depth and honest examination of one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous figures — one who’s already captured so much of the public’s attention.

Even thoughsome of these films have been box office flops, their existence reflects a larger cultural shift in how people are thinking about modern technology and the powers behind it. Hollywood has spent yearspoking fun atandmythologizing founders, and portions of the industry are finallybeginning to take a more critical view. As we continue to deal with the fallout of things likeElon Musk’s tenure at DOGEand OpenAI’s quest to bakegenerative AI into every aspect of our lives, audiences’ appetites for movies like these could grow. And with all of these foundersracing to monopolize the next tech frontier, the entertainment industry will probably have plenty of source material to drawfrom.

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