Would Ven Parish really be the richest person in the world? Here’s how the characters stack up to their real-life counterparts.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Mountainhead!
The four tech bro billionaires in the new HBO satirical movie Mountainhead are very rich—just ask them. Venis Parish (played by Cory Michael Smith), said to be the world’s wealthiest person (net worth: $220 billion), is “the king of cash, the marquis of Moolah, the North Star of net worth.” Randall Garrett (Steve Carell) is “the Grand Old Duke of dough,” with $63 billion. The “young buck making the big bucks,” Jeff Abredazi (Rami Youssef), has $59 billion. Even Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman), the “host without the most” and the “poor relation who still gets an invitation,” is worth a “not-too-shabby” $521 million. This is all according to one mountaintop scene, during which the moguls inscribe their fortunes on their chests in (surely expensive) red lipstick.
Mountainhead was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, a British screenwriter who’s best known for creating the hit HBO series Succession, which examined the fraught family dynamics of a billionaire media mogul not too dissimilar to Rupert Murdoch. Armstrong’s new movie takes place during a winter getaway to Van Yalk’s ultra-luxurious, mountaintop Utah home.
As the quartet’s poker night devolves into bickering and plotting both a world takeover and a murder, alliances—and net worths—shift. At least two of the characters in the movie are likely much richer come morning.
Here’s a look at how wealthy the four members of the “Brewster” crew in Mountainhead are, and how they would actually stack up against the real-life billionaire overlords, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list, which tracks the fortunes of all 3,000-plus billionaires around the globe.
Venis Parish
Net worth: $220 billion
Worldwide rank: 4 (as of June 10)
Approx. as rich as: Larry Ellison ($218 billion)
Ven sets off worldwide chaos when his social media giant Traam unleashes deepfake AI tools that run amok. But the richest person on the planet in the movie is actually far too poor to claim that title in real life. The “North Star of net worth” doesn’t burn quite as bright as Elon Musk, who is worth $411 billion as of June 10, despite his feud with President Trump—nearly twice as rich as Ven. In reality, Ven would rank fourth worldwide, behind Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($242 billion)—both seemingly inspirations for the character—and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($232 billion). He’s just a hair wealthier than yet another tech tycoon, Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($218 billion), though he does have tens of billions on folks like Warren Buffett ($153 billion) and Bill Gates ($116 billion), and with Jeff’s AI division in his control, he’ll soon be operating at “full tilt.”
Jeff Abredazi
Net worth: $86 billion
Worldwide rank: 22
Approx. as rich as: L’Oréal heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers ($90.5 billion)
Jeff rides a wealth rollercoaster in Mountainhead. First worth $38 billion—“59, actually,” he’s quick to correct—he soon overtakes Garrett with a “very chunky number” that the movie never specifies, based on the skyrocketing stock of his AI “guardrail” company. It’s unclear how rich he ends up after agreeing to sell his AI division to Parish’s Traam for $45 billion, but HBO has promoted the movie as being about “Four friends. $371 billion net worth. Zero culpability.” After factoring in Hugo’s glow up (see below), Forbes is attributing the rest of the additional wealth to Jeff—giving him a lot of copay cash for some much needed therapy.
Randall Garrett
Net worth: $63 billion
Worldwide rank: 28
Approx. as rich as: TikTok founder Zhang Yiming ($65.5 billion)
The investor and technologist “Papa bear” is clearly rankled when Jeff surpasses him in wealth. He’s also peeved that he hasn’t been able to buy a cure for cancer. But he’s still about as rich as another shadowy billionaire, controversial crypto kingpin CZ ($66 billion). And when it comes to government connections, he’s brags he’s “pretty deeply embedded in terms of hardware, software, payment rails, wages.” How can you put a price on the ability to control Belgium’s electric grid?
Hugo “Souper” Van Yalk
Net worth: $2.1 billion
Worldwide rank: 1,746
Approx. as rich as: Fashion mogul Tom Ford ($2.2 billion)
“The poorest relation,” Hugo is nicknamed “Souper”—as in, soup kitchen—for being the least rich of the bunch. “I can’t go unicorn,” he laments in one scene. “I cannot make my billion.” But, by the end of the film, the group’s “petroleum insurance policy” pays off big and Souper’s “lifestyle super-app” gets “bought out at 2 bil.” Assuming he swapped his shares for Traam stock—or avoided taxes if he fully cashed out, as billionaires often find ways to do—he’s now got a couple billion. That, plus “Mountainhead”—the Utah mansion where the movie is set, worth north of $50 million—pushes his net worth to at least $2.1 billion. “Congrats, Souper,” Randall tells him, “your centi-millionaireship is over.”
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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