Silicon Valley's horror shows

Hollywood's hottest villain right now is the tech billionaire.

Four films hitting theaters this fall put some of Silicon Valley's most powerful and controversial figures in the spotlight: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Elizabeth Holmes.

Why it matters: Hollywood's portrayal of Silicon Valley and its leaders is getting darker as negative headlines about the tech industry seep into pop culture.

Once portrayed as brilliant but flawed innovators, tech leaders are increasingly being cast as creepy villains whose ambitions may do more harm than good.

Zoom in: This fall's tech billionaire films span genres, from documentaries to thrillers. 💻 "The Social Reckoning," Aaron Sorkin's follow-up to his 2010 hit, "The Social Network," opened Friday with Jeremy Strong portraying a more sinister Mark Zuckerberg during the 2021 Facebook whistleblower leak .

Sorkin takes some cinematic liberties with chronology and other details. 🚀 "Musk," the four-hour documentary ( including a 10-minute intermission) about Elon Musk's rise, is playing in select theaters and opens nationwide on Friday.

The roller-coaster rollout of the film, directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, included critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival and legal threats from Musk's team. 🩸 "You Can See Everything," out Friday, is an experimental documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim that follows ex-Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she went to prison.

The studio, A24, says an "intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss." ( More on the film .) 🤖 "Artificial," a drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and hits theaters Christmas Day.

In the film, "[Garfield] depicts Altman as a manipulative, power-hungry psychopath who lies as easily as he breathes and will use anyone, anytime, anywhere to get what he wants," The Verge reports .

The studio, NEON, calls it "the story of OpenAI and a two-decade artificial intelligence arms race. ...

As the technology becomes more powerful and more valuable than anyone ever imagined, a battle rages over who should control the tech that could change the fate of humanity." These projects represent a sharp turn away from some earlier movies and documentaries about Silicon Valley, like "Jobs" and "Something Ventured," which celebrated the ingenuity of founders and venture capitalists.

"With tech, it was an ardent love affair," says Margaret O'Mara, a University of Washington historian who studies Silicon Valley.