What Does Ultra Wealth Look Like?
In HBO’s “Mountainhead,” the “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong uses subtle status symbols — and a secluded $65 million ski chalet — to convey hierarchy among the 0.001 percent.
When Paul Eskenazi, the location manager for “Mountainhead,” a new film from the “Succession” showrunner Jesse Armstrong, set out to find a house to serve as the primary setting for this satire about a group of ultrarich tech bros, he needed a very specific kind of extravagance. In the same way that “Succession,” which Eskenazi also worked on, reveled in “quiet luxury,” “Mountainhead” needed its moneyed protagonists to be living large but without flamboyance. Its characters are too wealthy for mere McMansions, and not any private residence would do.
Portraying how the ultrawealthy really live — with all their subtle signals and status cues — has become something of a specialty for Armstrong and Eskenazi. It’s about not just private jets and sprawling homes, but the quiet hierarchies within the top 1 percent. There’s a pecking order between the 0.01 percent and the 0.001 percent, the kind of distinction that insiders equate to owning a Gulfstream G450 versus a Gulfstream G700.
When Eskenazi found a lavish, 21,000-square-foot ski chalet built into a hill of Deer Valley in Utah, he knew it was the right fit — not because it was so large and impressive, though it’s certainly both, but because its extravagance had a subtlety that made it almost understated.
“There’s a kind of quiet wealthy embedded in that location that doesn’t necessarily scream at you. It reveals itself slowly,” Eskenazi said, pointing out that it has a private gondola with direct access to a nearby ski resort. “It’s not flashy, but it’s deeply exclusive — the kind of feature that signals a level of access and control money affords without ever needing to show off.”
“Mountainhead” is a tightly wound satirical chamber drama about four rich friends in tech who gather for a weekend of carousing while the world is plunged into chaos. There’s Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the founder of a Twitter-like app whose new A.I. creator tools have triggered a tidal wave of online disinformation; Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose content-moderation software holds the key to resolving global strife; Randall (Steve Carrell), an elder plutocrat with a philosophical bent; and Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), whose meager $500 million net worth has earned him the nickname “Soups,” for “soup kitchen.”
Virtually the entirety of “Mountainhead” takes place within the palatial walls of Hugo’s mansion, which feels like a fifth character.
In real life, the house is on West Crestwood Court in Deer Crest, a gated community adjacent to the Deer Valley ski resort, where celebrities like Khloé Kardashian and Gwen Stefani have hit the slopes. Designed by the architect Michael Upwall, it has seven bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, as well as a two-lane bowling alley, a full-size basketball court, an indoor rock-climbing wall, and a spa with a steam room and sauna.
Outside, it features an infinity pool and a whirlpool bath, both built into a 5,000-square-foot heated patio. But it’s more than just well appointed. As Eskenazi pointed out, the house is “not nestled into a community flanked by neighbors” but is “set apart, elevated, with sweeping views that feel deliberately unobstructed.” That sense of “space, privacy and silence,” he said, provides “its own kind of luxury.”
This was a stark contrast to Armstrong’s “Succession” and its protagonists, the Roy family, who own the media conglomerate Waystar Royco. “That kind of media mogul wealth is about access and movement. It’s flashy, public, very performative,” Eskenazi said. “With ‘Mountainhead,’ it was the opposite. Jesse wanted just one main house — huge, remote and a little unsettling”
“It was more about isolation and privacy than prestige,” Eskenazi added.
The remote home is the “pinnacle of ultraluxury,” in the words of Engel & Volkers, the real estate firm that recently listed the property for $65 million. (It sold for a figure “in the high-50-million range,” a representative for Engel & Volkers said.)
“Mountainhead” wasn’t conceived with this specific property in mind. Instead, the crew was briefed to search for something elevated and isolated, ideally set against snow and ice. What Armstrong wanted “wasn’t about a specific architectural style so much as a feeling,” Eskenazi said. “The house needed to be remote and imposing, yes, but also strangely intimate — a place that could hold both grandeur and silence. It had to feel like it had a history, even if we didn’t spell it out onscreen.”
The search for the right setting started broad: The crew considered homes in Europe, while HBO urged it to consider locations in Canada, such as Whistler, British Columbia, because of the country’s ample tax credits for visiting productions.
An architectural profile in the magazine Robb Report clued the crew into the Deer Valley property. “The moment Jesse saw it, everything changed,” Eskenazi said. “That was when the location locked in and we knew: This is it.”
Stephen Carter, the production designer on the film, and the crew added faux-stone veneers and cedar paneling to cover up some of the house’s bare walls, and he was responsible for details like art and furniture, including a $300 toaster and “a lesser-known Jeff Koons.”
Some of these fixtures were meant to convey Hugo’s desperation to impress, as well as his status as the minor magnate. For example, the art: “While these items would auction in the six figures, they’re not quite at the level” of the others in the group, Carter said. (“Was your decorator Ayn Bland?” Jeff ribs Soups when he arrives.)
One of the wittiest touches? A work by Damien Hirst in the entry hall: “Beautiful Bleeding Wound Over the Materialism of Money Painting.”
The cumulative effect of these details and the property they’re situated in suggests a kind of gilded cage — the perfect place to sequester four rich tech bros as society starts to collapse all around them.
“The house didn’t just support the story,” Eskenazi said. “It became part of it.”