Obama polishes script for the end of civilisation
An end-of-the-world thriller topping the Netflix chart has been called “the apocalypse according to Barack Obama”, after it was revealed how closely the former United States president advised on the hair-raising script.
Leave the World Behind, with its A-list cast of Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke, may seem far-fetched in parts – with planes falling out of the skies, and communications blackouts stranding the protagonists in a rural home oblivious to what is unfolding in the rest of the country – but cybersecurity experts say most of the drama is scarily plausible.
The plot was signed off by a man who received classified security briefings on global threats daily for eight years and happens to be, with wife Michelle, a founder of the production company behind the film.
Sam Esmail, the director, said Obama sent him “a lot of notes” on his script, toning down some aspects but agreeing that other apparently far-fetched incidents
were credible. “To hear an ex-president say you’re off by a few details ... I thought I was off by a lot!”
The film held the spot of most-viewed on Netflix for two weeks, recording 41.7 million views worldwide from December 4 to 10, followed by 44.9 million from December 11 to 17, adding Hollywood success to a post-presidency portfolio that already included the biggest-selling books of 2018 (Michelle Obama’s Becoming) and of 2020
(Barack Obama’s A Promised Land).
Leave the World Behind details how quickly modern life could unravel when communications satellites, TV, phones and wifi go out of service and suddenly there is no information about what is happening in the world.
“Our society is highly reliant on networks and information technology to do things that we now take for granted,” said John Hale, a cybersecurity expert at the
University of Tulsa who has given evidence to Congress on network security, and who found much of the film credible.
“In terms of the ability to compromise satellites and do massively destructive things to communications infrastructures, those things are unlikely but possible,” he said.
However, Hale took issue with one scene in the film that shows a plane crashing on to a beach.
“My area of expertise is cybersecurity, and so I get paid to think about these worstcase scenarios, but even that I thought was a little over the top,” he said. “Disasters like that require a cascading sequence of failures that are exceedingly rare.”
The Obamas’ company, Higher Ground Productions, struck a multi-year deal with Netflix in 2018.
It has turned out to be one celebrity Hollywood venture that has been a success, with Barack Obama picking up an Emmy for outstanding narrator in 2022 for the series Our Great National Parks.