Satirist and The Death Of Stalin writer-director Armando Iannucci will take aim at social media in his next film.
Writer, director and satirist Armando Iannucci has revealed that his next film will poke fun at social media. The project will see him team up with Jon Brown, with whom he previously worked on TV comedy series The Franchise, a satire of superhero movie-making. According to Chortle, Iannucci said on Daniel Merrifield’s The Movie Dweeb podcast, “I’m always interested in where power and influence is, so social media is something actually that Jon [Brown] and I have been working on together, on a film script, which we hope to shoot next year”.
Ianucci went on to say that it would be “set in that world of that next generation of your Zuckerbergs, your Musks and Peter Thiels, and all those people’ – referring to the founder of Facebook, owner of X and Facebook investor respectively.
He added: ‘I think that’s where we’re at now, where so much of opinion and information is controlled by these people who have never been trained in the ways of being global influencers, it just happened, and somehow they have to see if they can rise to the occasion or not.’
Iannucci began his comedy career on the radio, co-writing On The Hour and, later, its television adaptation The Day Today with Chris Morris. Concurrently, another character he co-created, Alan Partridge, began to take off, and Steve Coogan’s cringe-inducing radio host quickly got his own chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You and then headlined his own sitcom, I’m Alan Partridge. The character thrives to this day, having completing several hugely successful live tours and even a foray onto the big screen in 2013’s The Alan Partridge Movie.
Iannucci’s biggest success is political satire The Thick of It, which exposed the incompetent underbelly of British Government, propelled by Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker, who uttered some of the most creative cursing ever heard on television, courtesy of swearing consultant Ian Martin. Iannucci found even more success with the format when he remade it in America as Veep.
With the real life Government increasingly beyond satire, Iannucci moved on to other films, including The Death of Stalin and The Personal History of David Copperfield.
Iannucci’s stage adaptation of Dr Strangelove starring Steve Coogan is currently running in the West End. The Franchise, created by Jon Brown and executive produced by Ianucci, is currently streaming on Sky.
