Movie of the Week
Valley of the Boom: How The Web Was Won
A 6-part series from National Geographic – Valley of the Boom – delivers the drama of Silicon Valley’s Internet pioneers during the dot-com boom and bust.
Silicon Valley spawned some of the world’s most influential people and recognisable brands during the 1990s and attracted geniuses and charlatans alike. It is also where the new phenomenon of the overnight tech millionaire was born. Using a blend of narrative devices and interviews with the real subjects and experts woven into scripted drama, showrunner, creator, director and executive producer Matthew Carnahan (“House of Lies”) charts the meteoric rise and cataclysmic burst of the dot-com bubble.
Click through to watch the trailer and to read more about the series.
From STX Entertainment, Valley of the Boom is also executive produced by Arianna Huffington and is set to premiere on National Geographic on 20 January. The series features an unconventional hybrid of scripted storytelling and documentary interviews with the key players whose stories are dramatised in the show.
The series follows the turbulent ride of three different companies whose founders were trying to change the world using the new technology of the internet. Before Google, Netscape pioneered the first commercial web browser and launched the “browser wars” with Microsoft. Before Facebook, theglobe.com was a rapidly expanding social networking site built by dreamers on a university campus. And before YouTube, a con artist on the run from the FBI reinvented himself in Silicon Valley to start a streaming video company called Pixelon, resulting in an entrepreneurial rise and fall almost too insane to be believed.
Valley of the Boom stars an ensemble cast led by two-time Emmy award-winning actor Bradley Whitford (“Get Out,” “The Post,” “The West Wing”), Steve Zahn (“War of the Planet of the Apes,” “Dallas Buyers Club”) and Lamorne Morris (“Game Night,” “New Girl”).
Details:
National Geographic channel – DSTV Channel 181
Sundays, 20:00 & 20:50. 20, 27 January & 3 February (6 x 60 minutes) – Double bills
