Dave Eggers‘ 2013 dystopian novel The Circle was destined for the big screen as soon as it hit retail stores. The bestseller, which follows an entrepreneurial millennial named Mae Holland through the on-boarding process at a Facebook/Google/Apple-esque internet giant, injects the glitz and comfort of the modern internet company with questions of conspiracy and moral oversight. In other words, it’s about as relevant to our society today as any story out there. The film version, directed by James Ponsoldt, began filming last September, and today we got our first trailer.
The clip opens with Holland (Emma Watson) undergoing one of the lightning interviews for which Google et al are infamous. What is her biggest fear? Unfulfilled potential. Fast forward through a quick collage of your standard successful tech start up campus (verdant courtyards, free food, countless tech amenities, etc.) and you see visionary leader, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) giving a Steve Jobs-like presentation. “I am a believer in the perfectibility of human beings,” he says, and later, “We can finally realize our potential.” Aha! And we have a match.
Things get weird, of course, as is alluded to in the clip’s suspenseful end, filled with drones and cameras and screams. The Circle is a story of a company that, with enough knowledge, can accomplish anything, but is that a good thing? “Knowing is good. Knowing everything is better,” Hanks’ character asserts, ominously.
“The Circle is probably like many tech companies,” Ponsoldt said in an exclusive with USA Today, “pushing the ethical boundaries over how much autonomy and freedom we should have and how much privacy we should have.” How much knowledge is too much knowledge? Can companies balance these ethical borderlines? If you haven’t read the book, you can find out what Eggers thinks about it when the film hits theaters on April 28, 2017. Something tells me we might look back on this book as a prescient tale with sweeping implications…
Image: USA Today
