‘Dune: Half Two’ Offers Sci-Fi-Obsessed Silicon Valley a Purpose to Celebration

In a top-floor atrium in downtown San Francisco on Thursday night, tech staff from Google, Slack, X and Mozilla mingled subsequent to a pair of cardboard cutouts of Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.

Dustin Moskovitz, a Fb founder, chatted as others sipped from cannily named cocktails just like the Fremen Mirage (gin, coconut Campari, candy vermouth) and the Arrakis Palms (vanilla pear purée, gin, Fever-Tree tonic). Tim O’Reilly, a tech trade veteran, dropped by. Alex Stamos, the previous head of safety at Fb, was additionally noticed.

“Do you assume they’ll let me take dwelling one of many freaky sandworm popcorn buckets?” somebody within the crowd tittered. The suggestively designed buckets had grow to be a sensation throughout social media.

The techies had been all there to rejoice Silicon Valley’s latest obsession: “Dune: Half 2,” the newest film tailored from the Frank Herbert-authored science-fiction saga, which helped encourage a lot of them to grow to be interested by know-how. The movie, which follows the 2021 installment “Dune,” bought an estimated $81.5 million in tickets in the US and Canada over the weekend, the largest opening for a Hollywood movie since “Barbie.”

The invitation-only non-public screening on the IMAX theater in downtown San Francisco was hosted by two former tech executives turned podcasters of “Escape Hatch,” a weekly present targeted on sci-fi and fantasy movies. And it was not the one recreation on the town.

Throughout Silicon Valley — from enterprise capital companies to tech government circles — individuals had booked their very own non-public screenings of the film, directed by Denis Villeneuve. On Thursday, the enterprise agency 50 Years invited founders, mates and buyers to “come gas your creativeness with stellar science fiction” in a theater takeover.

Founders Fund, a enterprise capital agency cocreated by Peter Thiel, rented out the Alamo Drafthouse theater in San Francisco’s Mission District for the movie’s opening evening on Friday, with an open bar and free meals. Some individuals flew in from throughout the nation to attend.

“For those who’re a VC agency and also you’re not internet hosting a personal Dune II screening, are you even a VC agency?” Ashlee Vance, a longtime know-how journalist, wrote in a submit on X final month.

Whilst tech corporations have reduce jobs and perks in current months, the custom of the sci-fi film premier stays alive and effectively. Movies like “Star Wars,” “Dune” and “Prepared Participant One” had been the very issues that helped stir techies’ curiosity within the area of pc science. Now not content material with solely watching the longer term unfold onscreen, workers at corporations like Meta, Google and Palantir have began plucking instantly from their favourite films to construct the merchandise of tomorrow.

In Google’s early days, the corporate routinely purchased out whole theaters to see the newest superhero flick. When “Blade Runner 2049” debuted in 2017, the boutique tech funding banking agency Code Advisors rented out the Alamo Drafthouse for a personal screening and had a Q. and A. with the movie’s antagonist, Jared Leto. Enterprise capital companies have repeated the observe for different futuristic movies and sequence, together with “The Martian,” “Arrival” and HBO’s “Westworld.”

However “Dune” and “Dune: Half Two” maintain a particular place in Silicon Valley hearts and minds due to the sequence’ expansiveness. It doesn’t harm that “Dune” was born in San Francisco, the place Mr. Herbert lived within the late Fifties as he researched what turned the sequence of sci-fi novels.

“It is among the authentic world-building workout routines in style fiction, and we’re all about world-building right here,” mentioned Jason Goldman, a former Twitter government who joined Matt Herrero, a techie good friend, to create the “Escape Hatch” podcast through the pandemic lockdowns.

The “Dune: Half Two” viewing occasions additionally acted as a sort of protected area for techies to step away — nonetheless briefly — from the tech tradition wars that rage on- and offline.

“Twenty years in the past, most individuals coming into tech had been idealists with utopian goals,” mentioned Tom Coates, a tech veteran, on the “Escape Hatch” cocktail get together. “That’s clearly not true anymore — now for a lot of it’s rather more only a job, and one which has attracted a sure kind of ‘tech bro.’ However I believe it’s fascinating that we’re not all right here tonight to look at the Ayn Rand filmography.”

Mr. Goldman mentioned a part of Silicon Valley Valley’s enchantment with “Dune” might be because of characters like Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, a messianic determine who leads a downtrodden tribal group into rising up and defeating their evil overlords.

“What individuals need, what they’re all the time attempting to recreate, is that charismatic chief with the power to see into the longer term,” Mr. Goldman mentioned. “The hero worship of Steve Jobs is correct up there with the fanatical reward of Paul Atreides.”

What was not clear was what number of of Silicon Valley’s tech elite had absorbed the finer factors of the supply materials. Mr. Herbert was deeply skeptical of man’s technological progress, a perspective that framed his sequence.

“It’s all based mostly on a world wherein synthetic intelligence has been worn out totally,” mentioned Cal Henderson, the co-founder and chief technical officer of Slack, who attended the Thursday get together.

(That morning, Elon Musk had sued OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, over claims that the corporate had put business pursuits earlier than the way forward for humanity. “Meta doesn’t even start to explain it,” one other individual on the get together mentioned.)

Nonetheless, attendees had been decided to have enjoyable. One offered Mr. Herrero and Mr. Goldman with a shiny, custom-printed “Dune: Half Two” poster, with the hosts’ faces photoshopped over these of the movie’s celebrities. Tables had been stacked with trays of Nebula Nebulae parfaits (spiced chocolate and vanilla mousse) and platters of Atreides Delicacies (rice noodles, harissa, sesame oil).

After the film, which ran two hours and 46 minutes, ended, the group headed right into a V.I.P. room to report a dwell version of the podcast on what that they had simply seen. The geeking out continued previous midnight.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Goldman purchased tickets to a Monday matinee of “Dune: Half Two.”

“I can’t wait to see it once more,” he mentioned.