The eight-episode mini-series is part of a slew of new shows premiering this year that look at the American tech industry with greater scrutiny.
In the first episode of the new Hulu miniseries "The Dropout," a young woman studies a 1990s poster of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, her expression a mixture of admiration and envy.
But this is not the prelude to the story of Silicon Valley's greatness. The woman is Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried), and "The Dropout" is a twisty tale of wild ambition, repetition, and coming-of-age.
Hulu's series is one of at least three new shows debuting this year that take a decidedly skeptical view of the American technology industry and the hard-driving but embattled founders who run it.
"The Dropout" joins Showtime's anthology drama "Super Pumped," a portrait of the masculine arrogance and tactical brutality inside Uber, and Apple TV+'s limited series "Wecrashed," the rise and fall of office space startup WeWork. have an account. ("Super Pump" premiered in late February; "Wecrashed" debuted on March 18.)
The Big Tech titans seem to be the new TV antagonists – the small-screen villains who capture our attention in spite of, or perhaps because of, their alleged misdeeds.
TV producers have recruited big-name actors. “Super Pump” stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as former Uber chief Travis Kalanick, who resigned in 2017 amid scandals over workplace culture and privacy issues. "Wecrashed" stars Oscar-winning actors Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway as Adam and Rebekah Newman, the couple at the center of a spectacular Techworld implant.
"The Dropout" was created by Elizabeth Meriweather, a writer and producer previously best known for the Zooey Deschanel sitcom "New Girl". Meriweather adapted the Hulu series from the podcast of the same name hosted by ABC News journalist Rebecca Jarvis and assembled a group of familiar faces, anchored by Seyfried as the eponymous Stanford University dropout.
'She's such a mystery'
Meriweather saw the eight-episode TV version of "The Dropout" as an opportunity to delve deeper into the saga of Theranos and Holmes, who in January was blamed for misleading investors that its blood-testing startup had A revolutionary medical device was created.
But in many ways, Holmes remains an enigma to Merryweather.
“In this particular story, the deeper you dig, the less understanding you have,” Meriweather said with a laugh in a recent Zoom interview. "She's such a mystery — and, to me, she remains a mystery even after she's worked on the show."
Meriweather isn't the first producer to find rich psychological drama in Holmes' ascent and Theranos' crash.
"Don't Look Up" director Adam McKay will direct Jennifer Lawrence in a film adaptation of "Bad Blood," the bestselling book by The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carrero. Prolific documentarian Alex Gibney chronicled Holmes' fall from grace in HBO's "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley," released in 2019.
"I tried to think deeply about what was going on for him emotionally, because I felt it was a part of the story that I could tell, as a playwright, that journalists could not tell. I could imagine Could be what it would be like to be a fly on the wall,” Meriweather said.
Michael Showalter (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), who directed the first four episodes of “The Dropout”, said he felt equally compelled to “keep the audience in the room”, creating an intimacy occurred which may be difficult to find in court documents or strictly journalistic accounts.
"I want to feel like I'm in the room and I can see all the little looks" in Theranos' offices, Showalter said.
But in bringing Jarvis' podcast to Hulu, Meriweather saw an opportunity to explore our society's conflicting relationship with tech, the Bay Area's big ego, and the more troubling dimensions of startup culture that were once HBO's "Silicon". Wally" were mindlessly skewered. ,
"It feels like where we are now is a reckoning with all the stories tech companies told us in the early days," she said. "The myth about CEOs and the feeling that these companies can do no wrong and were a force for good only in our lives."
"The Dropout," "Super Pump" and "Wecrashed" may be part of a broader cultural trend some have labeled "techclash"—silicon on everything from privacy issues and monopoly power to social media hate speech. Growing hostility towards Valley firms.
Showalter said, "It seems we are re-examining people who, by strength of will and charisma, achieve whatever they want." "Who are we willing to put up with? What are the limits of pursuing that person?"
"Wecrashed" showrunner Lee Eisenberg, who was once the writer and director of NBC's "The Office," has described the Apple TV+ series as a "warning story."
“We as a society get swept up in unicorns and this idea that you can get rich quick,” Eisenberg told Entertainment Weekly in December. "I mean, Adam Newman unintentionally said he wanted to be a trillionaire. It's just wild."
The day Holmes was found guilty, The Associated Press said the blockbuster trial "exposed Silicon Valley's culture of hubris and propaganda." In making "The Dropout", Meriweather sought to further puncture a mask that Holmes created through magazine photo shoots and TED Talks.
"It's about the facts, as opposed to the stories the companies tell about themselves," she said. "It was a story that everyone wanted to believe — an uplifting tale people wanted to be true, and it's a big part of how the hoaxes continued for so many years."
"The Dropout", with its portrayal of Holmes as a steely manipulator, can also be combined with "Inventing Anna", a true-crime Netflix series about a recent socialite and grifter called Anna Delvey. Known as the one who duped friends and businesses. Tens of thousands of dollars.
"We live in an environment where there's a lot of misinformation coming to us all the time," said actress Elizabeth Marvel, who played Holmes' mother Noel. "We're all in a daily battle to figure out what's true and what's wrong, so these stories speak to our moment in a very profound way."
William H. Massey, who has a supporting role in "The Dropout" as inventor (and Holmes' family friend) Richard Fuse, sees the resonance of the series in even more nuanced terms.
"We can't lose our common sense," Macy said in an interview. “Everybody is trying to sell us stuff all the time. I don't think anything that's new is necessarily good."