THE TECH BROS are having a celluloid moment. But it’s not one of their making. Or their liking, for that matter.

Three cinema releases focusing on three tech oligarchs have been scheduled for release within a three-month period. Coincidence – or a reflection of the heightened public distrust of the purveyors of artificial intelligence and social media platforms? All three subjects – Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Sam Altman – are roasted by their creators, although each one is served up differently.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is a sequel of sorts to The Social Network, the commercial and critical Mark Zuckerberg biopic that garnered three Oscars and four Golden Globes back in 2010, including one each for Sorkin’s screenwriting.

Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’, a four-hour documentary, which lands in Irish cinemas on Friday, is a damning profile of Elon Musk. And Artificial, billed as a comedy-drama that skewers Sam Altman, the founder and chief executive of OpenAI, opens in December.

Despite – or more likely because – the combined worth of their various enterprises is around $8 trillion (€7.15 trillion), all three are surprisingly sensitive to criticism. It’s more surprising perhaps, given Musk and Zuckerberg’s ownership of vast swathes of social media, that the public perception of them remains so dismal.

A 2022 Harvard CAPS/ Harris Poll indicated just 14% of Americans approved of Zuckerberg, making him less popular than even Vladimir Putin, whose favourability rating stood at a relatively impressive 15%. Elon Musk didn’t fare much better. In CNBC/Generation Labs poll published two months ago, 70% of 18–34-year-olds surveyed said they didn’t trust Musk, Zuckerberg and Altman.

Time for some serious rebranding. The advance reviews of Gibney’s profile of Musk are stellar, which has prompted a furious backlash from its subject, coupled with legal threats and attempts to block its distribution.

The broligarchs at Meta, YouTube and TikTok, who claim to abhor censorship, rushed to his assistance, initially refusing to run ad campaigns or show trailers of Gibney’s documentary. Universal, the distributor, also developed a case of the wobbles when faced with the wrath of Musk.

The Social Reckoning starring Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

All of which has only served to heighten interest in advance of its release. Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, by contrast, has met with mixed reviews and a sluggish response at the box office.

His complex, talky style doesn’t........

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