Armando Iannucci readies social media satire
Armando Iannucci's next project looks set to be satirical movie about social media.
The Thick Of It creator, currently engaged with having co-written the West End stage adaptation of Dr Strangelove, starring Steve Coogan, and executive producing HBO comedy series The Franchise, set on the troubled shoot of a superhero film series, has revealed that he and The Franchise's showrunner Jon Brown plan to shoot his long-gestating idea for a film set in Silicon Valley next year.
Iannucci has been highly critical of X owner Elon Musk's tweets about the UK and his leveraging of his platform on behalf of Donald Trump's presidency. And he told podcaster Daniel Merrifield, aka The Movie Dweeb, that "I'm always interested in where power and influence is".
He added: "So social media is something actually that Jon and I have been working on together, on a film script, which we hope to shoot next year, set in that world of that next generation of your Zuckerbergs, your Musks and Peter Thiels, and all those people, because I think that's where we're at now, where so much of opinion and information is controlled by these people.
"[They] have never been trained in the ways of being global influencers, it just happened, and somehow they have to see if they can rise to the occasion or not."
Iannucci, who joined X alternative social media platform Bluesky on Monday, first began talking about making a television series on the subject more than a decade ago.
However, the success of his films, such as The Death Of Stalin and The Personal History Of David Copperfield, led to him seeking to turn the project into a feature instead.
In 2012, when The Thick Of It was coming to an end, he reflected on how power no longer lay with politicians.
"I'm thinking about the power of the internet. Microsoft, Google, Facebook" he told The Guardian. "You have these twentysomethings who have a way into billions of households. Where's the power gone? The power is gravitating towards these companies.
"I'm also interested in that personal thing of what it does to you when you're 25 and you're a multibillionaire and everyone in the world knows who you are."