What became Jesse Armstrong’s first script since Succession started with a book review.

In November 2023, the Succession creator wrote a review for the Times Literary Supplement of Going Infinite, Michael Lewis’ book about disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried. The assignment led to “a bunch of reading … about tech, AI, social media and ownership,” Armstrong told The Hollywood Reporter, and that in turn took him to the world of Silicon Valley podcasting.

“I started getting the tone of voice of Silicon Valley and the broader tech world in my ear,” he said, “and the incredible confidence of pronouncements — not just about tech, but starting to shade over into pronouncements about all sorts of different areas” stuck with him. “That voice became so persistent that it was like, I want to do this voice. And in a way, the voice came first, then the frame of this movie became apparent.”

The movie is Mountainhead, which premieres on HBO Saturday. The film stars Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef as tech moguls who gather for a guys’ weekend at the mountaintop home of Schwartzman’s character, Hugo “Souper” Van Yalk. As they do, though, a worldwide crisis erupts, caused in no small part by a set of AI tools that allow for super-convincing deepfake videos from the richest member of the quartet’s (Smith) company. The four spend much of the movie debating what, if anything, to do about the escalating chaos and pondering whether they should, essentially, take over the world.

Despite that bleak description, though, elements of dark comedy (and even farce) run through Mountainhead, similar to how Armstrong’s Succession operated. The comic elements were actually necessary, Armstrong told THR: “The extremity of where [the characters] get to, I hope, feels like the same sort of unbalance that you can sometimes feel as you watch world events unfold right now.”

For such a high-profile project, Mountainhead came together remarkably quickly. HBO announced the film in January; the four leads signed on between then and the beginning of filming in March; and production wrapped in April, leaving less than two months for post-production. On top of all that, Mountainhead is Armstrong’s first time directing a feature-length project.

The speed of the production pretty well matched the public timeline, Armstrong said. He pitched the idea to HBO chief Casey Bloys in December 2024, then wrote the script in January. Most of the cast signed on before Armstrong finished the script, and the production time was short.

Armstrong also wanted to get Mountainhead in front of viewers as quickly as possible for a couple of reasons. First, as he told THR at the movie’s premiere on May 22, “When people see it, they’ll realize it’s about this world that we live in right now, and the tech world changes so quickly. I was keen to write it and for people to see it in the same sort of bubble of time.”

Armstrong also didn’t want to give himself too much time to overthink things as he took on his first big directing assignment (he previously helmed two short films).

“I knew that, in a way, the cure for my anxieties about [directing] was twofold,” he said. “One was surrounding myself with a lot of people who had worked on Succession, so I felt really able to ask dumb questions and to lean on people who I trusted. And the other thing was maybe I’m never going to read enough interviews with other directors to insulate myself from all the mistakes I’m going to make. Maybe it’s better just to run at it and dive in and learn as I go, surrounded by people who are going to protect me. … I was just completely cocooned by people who I could say, ‘Look, is this going to work? Is this OK? Have I done that right? Is that wrong? Tell me.’ So that was my solution to that problem, rather than having longer preparation time.”

Mountainhead premieres at 8 p.m. May 31 on HBO and Max.