WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn tells the demise of a start-up

A few years back, film-maker Jed Rothstein made The China Hustle, a critically well-received but not widely seen finance documentary about a recent Chinese securities fraud scandal. Clearly the experience left him well-equipped and raring to expose another colourful story of Wall Street hustlers, toxic corporate culture and, as there always is with stories of this kind, an Icarus-like figure who rose high and fell low. Although not that low, given that (spoiler alert) Adam Neumann, the co-founder of office sharing/real estate company WeWork, ended up walking away after the bubble burst in the wake of a failed IPO and accusations of mismanagement, with a $1.7bn chunk of change in his pocket.

Readers of this publication will probably know the story already. But if not, WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn does an excellent job of recounting the history of WeWork, the New York-based start-up that at one point in 2018 managed more than four million square metres of prime real estate. Rothstein didn’t score original interviews with Israeli-born Neumann, his American actor wife Rebekah Neumann, who plays her own wacky role in the story, or co-founder Miguel McKelvey, although there are guest appearances via archive footage from Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashton Kutcher.

However, the scads of news footage of the principals more than make up for the lack of access. Because Rothstein doesn’t need to keep anyone crucial to the story sweet, the film is free to be very damning of how, as the title suggests, they turned a $47bn unicorn into a clapped-out load of old pony.

An assortment of former employees rinse out the company’s dirty knickers on camera, especially how it turned into a corporate cult over time, like the Moonies or Scientology but with more conference rooms, drugs and even goofier New Age blather. Some might long for a deeper cultural analysis that explores the story’s roots in late capitalist culture and the tech bro lifestyle, but informed viewers can look at the deep reporting here and draw their own conclusions.

★★★★☆

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