Leave the World Behind: the apocalypse thriller fact-checked by Barack Obama

The former US president used his White House experience to advise on hit Netflix thriller Leave the World Behind.

Cybersecurity experts say most of the drama in Leave the World Behind is scarily plausible. Picture montage: The Times

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 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’s 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 his wife Michelle Obama, a founder of the production company behind the film.

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are founders of Higher Ground Productions, the company behind the film. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

Sam Esmail, the director, said Obama, 62, sent him “a lot of notes” on his script, toning down some aspects but agreeing that other apparently far-fetched incidents were credible.

“I am writing what I think is fiction, for the most part, I’m trying to keep it as true to life as possible, but I’m exaggerating and dramatising,” Esmail told Vanity Fair. “And to hear an ex-president say you’re off by a few details … I thought I was off by a lot! The fact that he said that scared the f--k out of me.”

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 on 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.

“It’s not for no reason that there are hack-a-satellite contests in the security community. We have to worry about these things. There’s always some residual risk, something that you haven’t accounted for or that it’s economically unfeasible to address.”

He took issue with one scene in the film that shows a plane crashing into a beach. “My area of expertise is cybersecurity, and so I get paid to think about these worst-case 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.”

Obama with his vice-president, Joe Biden, in the Oval Office, 2009. Picture: Getty Images

The film also has currents of racial and class tension that follow the mission to explore these

dynamics set out by the Obamas when their 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 Our Great National Parks and includes the release in August of Rustin, a well-received drama about the civil rights activist behind the 1963 March on Washington.

“The industry is in a contraction and the idea that you spend all that money on someone who has the name but doesn’t necessarily have any experience, I really think that’s over,” said Michael Niederman, professor in cinema and television arts at Columbia College Chicago.

“The Obamas are different: both of them are naturally very good communicators and I think they understand the role of story in American life.

“He framed so much of what he was and why he ran for president in story form. It’s a different dynamic to people who may have been a prince and may have been an actor but have never demonstrated that ability.”

Niederman added: “The other thing is, they hired really good people. They always knew it was more than just the Obamas.”

The former president is now working on another script: the narrative for four floors of exhibits at his Obama Presidential Centre museum in Chicago’s South Side, which opens in 2025.

The Times