Super Pumped Trailer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Founded Uber, And Now He's Under Attack
We've entered a new chapter of the Eat the Rich media era — the one where we focus all our energy on hating Silicon Valley. Prepare for frenzied boardroom meetings, flashing nightclub lights, and lots of whiny white guys in blazers (this also works as a description of HBO's "Succession")! 2022 promises a number of stories about the rise and fall of tech businesses looming on the horizon like an approaching storm: Amanda Seyfried is taking on the role of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu's "The Dropout," while Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto are bound for AppleTV+ as WeWork execs Rebekah and Adam Neumann in "WeCrashed." But before they grace our screens, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will beat them to the punch as former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Gordon-Levitt is set to star in Showtime's upcoming anthology series "Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber," based on Mike Isaac's bestselling book of the same name. As you can guess from the title, it traces the story behind the ride-share company, rife with internal and external battles, many of which revolve around its now-ousted CEO and founder, Travis Kalanick. Now that the wait for the series is slowly drawing to a close, we finally have our first teaser trailer, showing off the business-suit-clad stars in all their glory.
Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber
Joseph Gordon-Levitt blazes through the first trailer for "Super Pumped" with all the manic energy of Justin Timberlake in "The Social Network." Maybe it's the California setting or the bloated ego, but they seem to radiate the same bad vibe, which makes plenty of sense given all they have in common.
Travis Kalanick's season of "Super Pumped" is the kind of story we already know ends in disaster — more specifically, a dramatic boardroom coup that leaves Kalanick ousted from the company. The ground for his descent is already being laid within the 49-second long trailer. While Kalanick yells, "We are in the world-changing business!" and declares that he's ready to "f***ing bleed" for Uber, his mentor Bill Gurley (Kyle Chandler) is elsewhere, warning "Travis is a liability." Their relationship will play a major role in the series, as Gurley suffers the consequences of betting his reputation on the "notorious bad boy of tech."
Here's the series description, per Showtime:
"Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber" tells the story of one of Silicon Valley's most successful and most destructive unicorns, Uber. The season pivots on Travis Kalanick (Gordon-Levitt), Uber's hard-charging CEO who was ultimately ousted in a boardroom coup, and his sometimes tumultuous relationship with his mentor Bill Gurley (Chandler), the plainspoken, brilliant Texan venture capitalist who bets his sterling reputation on Uber's success — and then has to live with the consequences. Uma Thurman stars as Arianna Huffington, the savvy businesswoman and co-founder of The Huffington Post, who was an Uber board member.
Initially developed as a miniseries, "Super Pumped" has since been reimagined as an anthology, not unlike "American Crime Story," but for business. Each season is set to explore a story that "rocked the business world to its core and irrevocably transformed our culture." The series comes from executive producers Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Beth Schacter ( also serving as writers and showrunners). Alongside Gordon-Levitt, Thurman, and Chandler, the series stars Babak Tafti as Emil Michael, Mousa Hussein Kraish as Fawzi Kamel, and Elisabeth Shue as Travis' mother, Bonnie Kalanick.
"Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber" premieres on Showtime on February 27, 2022.