Uma Thurman has signed on to portray Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post and founder and CEO of Thrive Global, in the upcoming Showtime series Super Pumped, which will revolve around the rise and fall of Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick.
The show will be an anthology series with each season chronicling the creation, rise and establishment of major companies that rocked the business world to its core and changed culture. The first season will be based on Mike Isaac‘s excellent book Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Kalanick.
This first season will track Kalanick’s smart but sneaky rise in the tech industry, to his ignominious exit from the company following a boardroom coup. Uber has stood out in Silicon Valley as both an example of a game-changing business that can be built from nothing, and also an ugly look at the tech industry’s rampant misogyny, greed and narcissism.
Huffington has a history of being a board member of several companies, which includes Uber, which she joined in 2016. Her presence was wildly celebrated by Kalanick at the time, who acknowledged he was in deep need of learning from her emotional intelligence.
She joins a cast that already includes Hank Azaria as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Kyle Chandler as Uber co-founder Bill Gurley, and Kerry Bishé as Austin Geidt, who started at Uber as an intern and worked all the way up to Head of Strategy.
Beth Schacter (Soundtrack), Brian Koppelman (Billions), and David Levien (Ocean’s Thirteen) will serve as showrunners for the first season.
Amy Israel, executive vice president of scripted programming for Showtime, was pleased to have cast Thurman:
“We’ve been eager to work with Uma Thurman for a long time, and we’re thrilled to have found the perfect role for her in Arianna Huffington – a role to which Uma will lend her innate complexity, intelligence and magnetism. Uma, Joseph, Kyle and our incredible ensemble will undoubtedly bring this propulsive, culture defining and wildly entertaining story of Super Pumped to life.”
There’s currently no word on a release date yet for Super Pumped, but expect it to be heavily discussed once it arrives.
#Peace.Love.SuperPumped
