Mountainhead’s Jesse Armstrong Explains Why He Didn’t Set His New Film in the Succession Universe
‘I’d be tonally misleading people,’ the Succession creator said about Mountainhead
At one point while writing Mountainhead, Jesse Armstrong considered having his HBO film — which marks the Succession creator’s directorial debut — take place in the Succession universe. Mountainhead, which premieres May 31 on Max, is a bold satire about tech billionaires. And the potential appearance of one particular character from Armstrong’s drama crossed his mind.
“Alexander Skarsgård‘s a brilliant actor and I was like, oh, maybe — could we go off and see him?” The director told TV Guide at Mountainhead‘s world premiere in New York. He is of course referring to Lukas Matsson, the cavalier tech billionaire running the streaming media giant GoJo that, Succession spoiler alert, ultimately acquired Waystar RoyCo. But Armstrong decided to go in another direction.
“As the piece developed, although the look of the film I think people will find quite similar to Succession — I borrowed a lot of talent and leant on a lot of colleagues from that show — the tone of it’s actually kind of different,” Armstrong said. Mountainhead follows four friends — with a net worth of $371 billion — who gather for a luxurious staycation while the world is quite literally falling apart thanks to the technology one of them built. Starring Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef, and Jason Schwartzman, Mountainhead examines the lengths the ultra-rich will go to protect their wealth and power. “It develops in a way which I think people will find very different from what would happen in a Succession episode.”
Because of that, Armstrong wanted to manage audience expectations. “It just felt wrong,” he said about setting the film in the Succession universe. “I’d be tonally misleading people if they thought, oh, Roman Roy might be switching on and seeing the same news as these people.”
With that said, the director acknowledged that Matsson would get along decently with this quartet. “He’d fit in pretty well,” Armstrong said. “He has that confidence bordering on arrogance that they have.” The conversation would likely flow between these characters, too. “[Matsson] was keen on these big questions of, ‘Is France gonna make it?’ He says in the series,” Armstrong recalled. “It’s the kind of stuff I could hear these [Mountainhead] guys talking about for a couple of hours.”
Mountainhead premieres on Max May 31.
