Jared Leto is WeWork founder Adam Neumann in trailer for Apple TV’s WeCrashed
The upcoming series, which also stars Anne Hathaway, hits the streamer on March 18
Aux News Adam Neumann
Scammer season continues with the teaser trailer for Apple TV+’s WeCrashed, about the rise and fall of coworking space company WeWork. Jared Leto stars as founder Adam Neumann, while Anne Hathaway stars as Rebekah Neumann, WeWork’s chief brand and impact officer, and Adam’s wife.
The series’ logline explains, “The series is inspired by actual events—and the love story at the center of it all. WeWork grew from a single coworking space into a global brand worth $47 billion in under a decade. Then, in less than a year, its value plummeted. What happened?”
In the trailer, Leto’s Adam lays out his utopian dreams for WeWork, walking investors through a soon-to-be-transformed space and declaring, “Let there be lights.” Leto tries to mimic Neumann’s Israeli accent, but there’s shades of his House of Gucci attempt in it.
Meanwhile, Hathaway’s Rebekah tells an adoring crowd, “WeWork’s role is to elevate the world’s consciousness,” which…we’re talking about coworking spaces? Maybe chill, Rebekah. The whole vibe of the trailer is very startup cult.
The limited series, which will air for eight episodes, also stars Kyle Marvin, America Ferrera and O-T Fagbenle. The first three episodes will premiere March 18, with the following episodes airing weekly.
If you’re looking for more content about the rise and fall of the company, there’s always the documentary Hulu released last year, WeWork: Or The Making And Breaking Of A $47 Billion Unicorn. There’s also the book by Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell, The Cult Of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, And The Great Startup Delusion, released last July.
Somehow, despite the turmoil and the global pandemic that sent workers out of coworking spaces and into their homes, WeWork still exists. And Adam Neumann has moved on to greener financial pastures: regular ole real estate.
38 Comments
The book is VERY good.
He looks like the bastard offspring of Tom Hiddleston and Tommy Wiseau.
Actually, yes.
Too masculine. The actual guy looked like the actress in How I Met Your Mother.
Bruh what actress from HIMYM does he look like?? Please don’t say Cobie Smulders.
Frances Conroy
Yeah, that’s who I was referring to.
What a story, Dirts!
Please, Dirts is my father. You can call me [SOUND OF CAT BEING INTERROGATED]
Ah yes, Tommy Widdleston.
“I actually worked at a WeWork” thread:I actually worked at a WeWork for about six months when my company moved into there (for complicated reasons we’d been in an office that was much too large). It was okay, but I still refer to it as the Glass-Walled Nightmare. Unlimited free coffee and beer in the lobby was nice though.
I had to google what WeWork was. There is a guy in my town that started a “WeWork”. I guess it’s quite lucrative because he owns like 4 supercars.
I have a client that was in one of their spaces on six months free rent, and just as that was expiring WeWork opened another location and paid to move the company (it was small, six people) to it and given them another six months free. The second space was really cool (beer, coffee and juice were nice) and in a great part of town but it was definitely weird being able to walk down the hall and just look directly in to every office on the floor. I remember wondering even then how WeWork could afford to spot so many companies free rent for that long.
“Unlimited free coffee and beer”.WeWork, in those brief periods between pissing for lengthy periods.
This one made even less sense to me than Theranos. At least with biotech the average person has no real idea if a concept will work or not. Lack of results is easier to disguise. Meanwhile WeWork was a damn subleasing business that somehow convinced the world it was really the combination of a tech company, lifestyle business, health and wellness brand AND education provider (his wife mostly being behind the last three). Even with the massive amounts of bullshit money they were throwing around, any half-decent financial analyst could project how much cash they would need to get to break-even. Yet they just kept pumping money into the fireplace with seemingly no planning at all, and then were indignant when the bill came due.
What was even more ridiculous that there was actually a company that had tried to do the same thing in the 90s, gotten a lot of money, not breaking the industry as promised and then after changing names settled in to the office leasing business with a good profit margin.Like the pretty much the same thing had happened 20 years before WeWork and people paid no attention.
The one I remember seeing first was Regus, and your comment is exactly what I said. “Isn’t this just Regus with better designs and beer?”And yeah, there are a bunch of them. And they’re valued like real estate companies. How novel.
Mock all you like, but the guys at MoviePass were very impressed by this business model.
The old “we’ll make it up on volume” strategy. Bold.
There are plenty of copycats out there still, so it’s a grift that keeps on giving.
god damn is Anne Hathaway a magnetic actress.Leto is a insufferable but he seems appropriate for this role.
I first saw her in a little indie called ‘Rachel Getting Married’ sometime after her ‘Princess Diaries’ days, and I was so impressed by her work. I’ve had a little celebrity crush on her ever since.
I skipped a lot of the WeWork bullshit since I was burned out on the Theranos bullshit. Neumann is just more proof that people, especially in SV, seem to be so enamored of the sizzle that they don’t bother to check where the sound is coming from. Moreover, this seems to be an increasingly common business model – selling yourself as some cult visionary rather than the actual boring spreadsheets and numbers and shit behind the actual product. The sad thing is, it apparently works.
Big difference between the two, though – I believe that he walked away from this sinking ship with a massive severance/buyout (not sure of all the details), while she’s facing jail time.
The thing is that he didn’t technically commit fraud.
It’s one thing to provide astronomical and unrealistic projections to investors as a private company: they have a responsibility to do their due diligence. What screwed Holmes was that she made claims about the efficacy of the underlying product which could either be indepently verified or denied, and those claims formed the basis of the investments. Neumann wasn’t selling a product; he was selling a piss-poor real estate invesment trust disguised as a tech company.
Also, most of WeWorks valuation was buoyed by investor expectations that Softbank would continuously provide them financing and prop up the main elements of the business that weren’t financially sound. Once Softbank turned off that spigot (which signaled to other investors there was a problem, since WeWork was one of Softbank’s biggest plays, and if it was good, why would they invest less?), it all came crashing down, especially once the other investors demanded to see the figures that Neumann had presented Softbank.
WeWork still exists because Softbank paid to get rid of Neumann, and they’re still on the hook for many of the leases they signed with the landlords, as well as the subleases with the tenants. Bit of a spilled milk case, but as others have said, running a REIT that functions as a sub-leasor can be profitable, but it’s not nearly a business that warrants anywhere near a $47bn valuation.
Agreed, and I would even add that Neumann was selling an actual product. He was a complete asshole and tried to sell this experience bullshit, but at the end of the day, an investor could look at his business and say “well… he does have properties and he does sub-lease them.” Even if some of those properties he leased from himself (or he leased the name WeWork… he owned something personally that he licensed or rented to WeWork), there was something there. If you go to Applebees and they tell you they have the worlds best, most life-changing steak and its delicious and will ruin other steaks forever, its bullshit… but you are still going to get a steak. Theranos, on the other hand, had nothing but a pipe dream based on wishes. That one was like going to Applebees to get the world’s cheapest, best tasting steak that also provided health benefits and will cause you to poop silver… and they actually had an empty kitchen.So yes, I grant that there are substantial differences between the two that make them different stories. But there are similarities too that I have had enough. Trump, Musk, Holmes, Neumann… these are all cult leaders and in many (but not all) circles, their leadership styles and self-promotion are viewed as positives, rather than sparkles designed to distract from their bullshit. It is exhausting and disappointing that so many people buy it.
Wait, people order steak at Applebee’s?????
It’s that last part that’s so confounding. Who is more to blame for these situations – the charlatans who come up with these ideas, or the people who through ungodly amounts of investing at them? At the end of the day, WeWork seems like an elaborate joke, while Theranos really hour people’s health at risk. And I love how, after each of these Ponzi schemes collapses, there are numerous op-Ed and think pieces with some variation of the headline “Has Silicon Valley Learned It’s Lesson?” … and then the latest issue of Wired or Fast Company has the latest savior selling ice cubes to Eskimos on Its cover.
Height….HEIGHT!Part of Adam Neumann’s success is how we took over a room with his presence and wingspan. Adam Neumann 6’5Jared Leto 5’10Could they not find another actor who wall willing to grow his hair out or more importantly, learn an Israeli accent instead of vaguely Italian.
Anne Hathaway has to accept roles where she works with Jared Leto now? It’s that serious?
WeWork is a cautionary tale, sure, but I think of it more as a comedy. Tons of people were criticizing it before it decided to try to go public, and when it actually did tank, there were a lot of people who just shrugged and moved on, since most people seemed to think it was doomed from the start.The story I’m more interested in, though, is Uber under Travis Kalanick. That sounded like huge disaster that kept compounding. Kalanick’s cloud kitchen venture seems to have the same issues as well.
Nice mom jeans, Annie.
At least WeWork gave us a funny Broad City episode with Illana creating “SheWork”The prosthetics and the contacts are so distracting…He looks like a mannequin possessed by a demon from Supernatural
I heard Jared Leto really got into the role for this – he even sent his co-actors used cubicle walls.
I don’t buy Leto’s character. He needs to have “Disruption” tattooed across his forehead or something.
So the founder of WeWork is a vampire, right?
I’ve always hoped Disrupted:My Misadventure in the Start-up Bubble, would get this kind of treatment , its basically about a guy in his early 50s who worked at HubSpot , and dealt with a lot of similar kind of stuff there .https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/27/the-book-hubspot-never-wanted-you-to-read/
When o when will people finally realise this guy is just terrible. Same look on his face every single role.