On May 31, 2025, HBO will release Mountainhead, the closest thing to a movie set in the Succession universe. Succession‘s creator, Jesse Armstrong, wrote and directed the hyper-satirical chamber piece, which follows four ultra-wealthy tech bros reuniting for a lavish getaway as the global economy disintegrates. Critics have praised the film for its outstanding performances and sharp dialogue, which rivals that of Succession.
Although media magnate Logan Roy and his greedy, ambitious children do not appear in Mountainhead, the film’s trailer unmistakably evokes Succession, featuring Armstrong’s trademark barbs and one-liners skewering tech culture, out-of-touch billionaires, and unchecked American capitalism. In other words, Mountainhead is a must-visit destination for Succession fans.
‘Mountainhead’ Follows Four Billionaires
Written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, Mountainhead tracks four odious, mega-rich American friends who reunite for a casual weekend getaway in Utah during the winter. The title “Mountainhead” refers to the name of the mansion-like lodge the foursome stays in, where Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) plays host. As the only non-billionaire in the group (he’s a multimillionaire), Hugo is jokingly called “Soup Kitchen” by the three others due to his perceived poverty.
The three other insufferable tech bros include Randall (Steve Carell), the eldest member and initial investor who is battling cancer; Venis (Cory Michael Smith), an AI deep-fake specialist; and Jeff (Ramy Youssef), a liberal-leaning tech guru specializing in filters that help distinguish deep fakes. When Venis proposes purchasing Jeff’s AI filter tools, the negotiation launches a full-fledged existential conversation about an impending economic meltdown. And how their bottom line is affected.
As the world burns around them, the avaricious tech bros take luxurious delight, proving how cynical, nihilistic, self-absorbed, and morally bankrupt they are. Much like the appeal of Succession, Mountainhead focuses on deeply unlikable characters with little redeeming value who stumble and fumble their way to the throne as CEO, and get the humbling comeuppance they deserve. The foursome serve as stand-in figures, akin to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel, highlighting the callous behavior of the billionaire class as the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen.
Jesse Armstrong Doubles Down on the ‘Succession’ Formula in ‘Mountainhead’
Rated #57 on IMDb’s Top 250 TV Shows, Succession won 19 Primetime Emmy Awards during its five-season run from 2018 to 2023. Jesse Armstrong created the show and wrote many of its scripts as a modern-day retelling of Macbeth, Shakespeare’s family tragedy about rival siblings vying to succeed the king. In Succession, the king was Logan Roy (Brian Cox), a Rupert Murdoch-like media tycoon who has no faith in his three incompetent children aspiring to succeed him.
The three children include the drug-addled Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the conniving Shiv (Sarah Snook), and the perverted Roman (Kieran Culkin). This detestable lot manipulate each other and backstab their way toward the CEO position as Logan’s health wanes. Armed with cutting insults and high-powered zingers, Mountainhead takes its characters and the insolent way they speak to each other to a whole new level.
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By confining the foursome to a single setting and accelerating his acerbic dialogue to nuclear levels, Armstrong wisely keeps his directorial debut familiar and self-contained. In other words, it seems he’s essentially recreating the award-winning Succession formula, making the characters even more loathsome as the commentary continually denigrates the moral rot of tech bro culture. Short of a feature-length reunion of the Roy family, Mountainhead is shaping up to be the next best thing to an official Succession movie.
In addition to Armstrong, Succession‘s executive producers — Frank Rich, Jon Brown, Lucy Prebble, Tony Roche, Mark Mylod, and Will Tracy — serve the same role on Mountainhead. As such, fans of the hit HBO series can expect creative and tonal continuity in the upcoming film.
What Critics Are Saying About ‘Mountainhead’
Ahead of its HBO premiere on May 31, 2025, Mountainhead holds an 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a 68 Metascore. Nearly every single review compares the film to Succession’s dramedy balance, with some critics admiring the effort to push the formula forward and others less impressed. A staunch defender of the film is The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw, who writes:
“Jesse Armstrong has returned with what feels like a horribly addictive feature-length spin-off episode from the extended Succession Cinematic Universe…More than any comedy or even film I’ve seen recently, this is movie driven by the line-by-line need for fierce, nasty, funny punched-up stuff in the dialogue, and narrative arcs and character development aren’t the point.”
Those detracting from the film’s merits recognize the sizzling wit, yet argue that the toxic characters are too repulsive to sit with for 108 minutes. One such critic is IndieWire‘s Christian Zilko, who notes:
“’Mountainhead’ is a clear extension of some of the themes Armstrong explored in ‘Succession’…But it never comes close to achieving the high-wire act that enshrined ‘Succession’ in the pantheon of great TV shows: making us like those characters.”
Indeed, for all the Roy siblings’ faults and flaws, their award-worthy performances made viewers care for them by the story’s end. With Mountainhead, Armstrong seems less interested in making the four deplorable tech bros redeemable, and more concerned with coloring them as foolish caricatures who stand in for today’s destructive and divisive, mega-powerful CEOs. Those complaining that the characters are flat and two-dimensional may be missing the point Armstrong is deliberately underlining in big bold print.
Even if Mountainhead‘s satirical lens gets a bit foggy for some, the picture seems to remain clear regarding its stance on unchecked wealth and capitalism run amok. In lambasting the rich and powerful as greedy, soulless exploiters of the less fortunate, Mountainhead shares the same central thesis Armstrong introduced in Succession. It’s just literally ramped up to new heights in the Utah mountains. Mountainhead will premiere on HBO and stream on Max on May 31.
