Former employees say that Neumann can get “anyone to do anything,” and he dismissively compares his personal assistant to a female employee walking past during a meeting. The film works. I also found my brain itching at moments that were clearly edited out of the narrative to tell a cohesive story, at the expense of explanation. But for those faults, WeWork: Or, The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn remains essential viewing, even if it is a tad shallow. After a debut at the SXSW film festival, the documentary “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Million Unicorn” bows on Hulu this Friday. You can probably guess whether any of those made their founders rich. For example, the WeWork doc skates right past the number of white executives running the company, glossing over a problem big enough to merit its own documentary, the chilling and inspiring Coded Bias. Directed by Jed Rothstein and co … But however crazy I thought this story was, WeWork: Or, The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn shows it was much, much worse. Scruff. The film is set to arrive on the streaming platform April 2nd. Campfire had previously partnered with Business Insider on a WeWork documentary, but this is a new project. Or chant anything else, for that matter, because it’s a very clear red flag that footage of you is going to end up on a tell-all documentary between five and ten years later. The rock star founder archetype goes back to Thomas Edison, via Steve Jobs, but thanks to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey the modern myth of the entrepreneur spread from Silicon Valley to define the 21st template of what success looked like. As recounted by a handful of insider interviews, he was a charismatic and enthusiastic young man waving his hands and spinning a seductive vision, a promise of community. WeWork founder Adam Neumann is the focus of a new documentary about his company’s rise and fall. When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Their point was to say that venture capital’s ability to bankroll money-losing businesses until they become behemoths is a bad thing. At one point, Urbish says that he was going to a birthday party for someone who didn’t live in the building, and noticed people seemed to be recoiling in disgust. One thing that Neumann was clearly good at was throwing a party, and WeWork became infamous for its summer-camp style retreats. Ultimately, The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn is a concise summation of the facts, but a documentary about this particular debacle is crying out for fresher insight or stronger conclusions than this film manages. Review: Hulu's documentary about WeWork and Adam Neumann tells a crazy story, but it could have gone deeper. If you’ve seen documentaries like Going Clear, The Inventor or Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, the beats of this movie will be familiar. DMX hospitalized after suffering an overdose, heart attack: report, Suspect in attack at U.S. Capitol described as average jock whose mental health appeared to quickly unravel, Trump and Carlson lead backlash as MLB pulls All-Star Game from Georgia, Vulnerable Dems fret after getting a shock: AOC’s campaign cash. Rothstein, however, also does an incredible job of building the story behind the film. Lip service, too, is paid to the reports that he was buying properties out of his own pocket just to lease back to WeWork. Director Jed Rothstein begins with the 2008 financial crisis to reveal why. Being a billion-dollar tech company. That’s not the intended message of WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, the new documentary streaming on Hulu, but it’s certainly the reason people will tune in. Instead of probing deeper structural issues, the WeWork film treads the same ground as previous articles and profiles recounting the lavish spending and personal eccentricities of Neumann and his straightfacedly hippy-ish wife, Rebekah. Not to mention the limited mention of Neumann licensing the “We” trademark to his company for close to $6 million — which he subsequently paid back. The film deftly unpicks the rather prosaic reality behind the gleaming coffee machines, buzzing buzzwords and omnipresent motivational slogans: WeWork was (and still is, pandemic permitting) a real estate company. It's astonishing seeing the sums of money thrown Neumann's way, which just shows that the very rich are no smarter and every bit as credulous or self-deluding as the people who aspire to join their ranks. WeWork: Or, The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn premieres April 2nd, on Hulu. Forgetting, of course, that such a venture was backed by someone else’s cash, and affected other people’s children. That's something the founders and employees vehemently denied, because being a real estate company isn't cool. Then people are put into ever-escalating situations to justify that first decision, first as triumph, then as farce. At one point, the event is described as “Fyre Festival done right,” with a big emphasis on the company’s drinking culture. For a time, charismatic entrepreneur Adam Neumann, co-founder of the office space-sharing company WeWork, dazzled investors. As people became embedded in the building, they found themselves becoming extraordinarily insular. WeWork's other co-founder, Miguel McKelvey, is conspicuous by his absence. Box Office Movie Reviews International The Race Heat Vision Behind the Screen THR Presents WeWork Documentary in the Works From Business … In part, this is because the Neumanns refused to contribute to a documentary which would likely paint them in a harsh light. Hulu’s WeWork documentary—WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of A $47 Billion Unicorn— knows you’re starved for gossip right now. It follows the rise and fall of co-working space WeWork and its eccentric founder, Adam Neumann. The film neglects to mention the Wall Street Journal story that claims Neumann, after discussing mass layoffs as a cost-cutting measure, had tequila shots brought in for the employees to drink. The film cuts together moments of Neumann potentially misrepresenting WeWork’s profitability but never with the weight the subject should be given. But the filmmakers make a lot about praising Adam’s messianic, attractive personality, but that doesn’t come across here. But few companies have risen and flamed out in such public fashion, with Neumann already grinning from countless articles, news reports, magazine profiles and TED talks.Â. WeWork's Adam Neumann fit the bill. By Dan Jackson Published on 4/2/2021 at 4:04 PM No, this would change the world. The rise-and-fall narrative of WeWork gets a streaming documentary that only scratches the surface of a fascinating story. A lot of these modern-day business failure documentaries often have holes in their center as they fail to grasp the motivations behind their lead characters. Yoink. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to read. Hulu has released a new trailer for its upcoming documentary chronicling the rise and fall of WeWork… After all, it only takes you to make one good bet, and you could be a major investor in the next trillion-dollar giant. Hulu has released a documentary about WeWork's fanatical rise and fall — read the … Similarly, the business fundamentals of the company are glossed over until later on, when the amount of money it’s losing falls into stark focus. And … WeWork Documentary Trailer. America Has Long Favored Cars Over Trains and Buses. The moment when the summer camps are made mandatory, and employees are made to wear tracking bracelets seems off. WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn takes a look at the community-centric ideal that sent the little co-working venture sky-rocketing and then investigates what was really going on behind the scenes. You know what's cool? They laid some of the blame at the feet of Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Softbank and head of the Vision Fund, which handed Neumann a $4 billion-plus check. During the panel, director Jed Rothstein said that he was “more interested in [Adam Neumann] when I finished making this, rather than less.” In a way, that’s a small indictment of his own film, which fails to really wrestle together a coherent portrait of Neumann. It’s something that several documentaries have struggled to achieve, and so I don’t blame Rothstein here. Youplanme. A new Hulu documentary from director Jed Rothstein called “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn” details the rise of … There’s a supposedly charismatic individual who is able to convince people to buy in to their vision, no matter how off-kilter it is. In an age when technology companies ruled all, WeWork did its best to look like a tech giant. In addition, the filmmakers seem convinced that Neumann is an ingenue with good intentions. But like the ill-fated Fyre Festival or fraudulent blood testing company Theranos, WeWork's founder turned out to be selling smoke and mirrors.Â, This won't be news to anyone with any passing interest in the WeWork story, however. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. They both grew up in communal living spaces — a commune in Oregon for McKelvey and an Israeli kibbutz for Neumann. From cultlike presentations to booze-soaked parties to bizarre dreams of reinventing children's education, this extraordinary couple is fun to gawk at. “When we started this,” said producer Ross Dinerstein, “I thought that there would be federal charges, criminal indictments [...] I went into this thinking he was a white-collar criminal, and he’s not.” Dinerstein added that he felt Neumann “played by the rules” and “people enabled him,” the same people who he felt could, or should, have intervened when things looked to be spiralling out of control. Neumann's sales pitch seduced two distinct groups with the same promise. While the movie seems to have some glaring spots missing it does do a good job of breaking down an immensely complex situation into something digestible. That is to say, while it is insightful on the murky history of the business, it’s missing more emphasis on the human experience specific to how demagogue Adam Neumann inspired thousands … I t’s almost by requirement that Hulu’s WeWork: Or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, a documentary on the spectacular over … But as a new documentary, “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn,” illustrates, Neumann was undone by the punishing reality of … The film tells the story of WeWork, a New York coworking company co-founded by Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann. WeLive converted an office block into a series of “tiny living” apartments with foldaway Murphy beds and spartan furniture. The power of a documentary is that it can show you the people involved with a directness that a written article might struggle to match. The image of the 21st century tech genius entrepreneur has become so powerful everybody wants to be the next Jobs, Zuck or Musk. Hulu has released a new trailer for its upcoming documentary chronicling the boom and bust of WeWork. Watch the new trailer for the Hulu documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn premiering at SXSW. SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son wrote Adam Neumann a $4 billion dollar check. He wasn’t renting desks for freelancers, entrepreneurs, dreamers and startups — he was building “The We Community.” This wasn’t just Regus with better furniture. Oh, and if you ever aspire to run your own business, don’t make your employees chant the company name. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, Softbank investor Masayoshi Son earmarking $100 billion, artificial intelligence will take over the world. Amid economic disaster, tech companies seemed like a shining future, and a visionary founder with a dream pitch was a key element in any startup's story. Jackal Pan/Visual China Group via Getty Images, Discuss: WeWork documentary: Delve into the spectacular fall of a hot startup, WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, Documentary director on why he wanted to tell the WeWork story, Elizabeth Holmes Theranos documentary exposes American health care. Despite its founders swearing that it was a technology company, in reality it was just another office-lease firm. At the other end of the scale, the same desire infected another group: the money men. Their dream was outlined as a form of “capitalistic kibbutz,” which took the form of building a series of expensive and beautiful office spaces in New York City. The WeWork documentary is intriguing simply by the fact that its subject is intriguing. Hulu's documentary "WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn" debuted on April 2. The documentary briskly tells the story of how WeWork reinvented office space for freelancers and small-business folk keen to entwine creativity and productivity in the name of the all-important hustle. And even if WeWork was actually built on bricks and mortar, it hid that business behind a thoroughly modern facade. A lot of the film features moments of people downing shots, hosting ragers at the office mini-bars in a way that seems unhealthy. Watch the WeWork documentary trailer below. The filmmakers said that they believe that the bigger issue is the nature of late-stage capitalism right now, which enables people like Neumann. As the film's title reveals, billions of dollars were shoveled into Neumann's co-working space empire, although by focusing on the charismatic founder, the film isn't as insightful as it could have been. WeWork's messianic co-founder Adam Neumann, the latest in a line of visionaries whose vision turned out to be a mirage.Â. But during Jed Rothstein’s new documentary WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, I found myself shouting multiple times at WeWork… When you’ve finished it, the first thing you’ll do is start looking for a book or news article that can help you explore this moment of collective insanity even further. And if the spectacular disaster of the WeWork story tells us anything, it's that anyone, rich or poor, will lose their mind to be part of their own Silicon Valley superstar story. But WeWork's cautionary tale illustrates more than just the amusing hubris of yet another superstar entrepreneur. WeGrow was a New York-based private elementary school with a facility designed by Bjarke Ingels which, HuffPost reported, cost between $22,000 and $42,000 a year for tuition. 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