This is what ultrawealth looks like

The Age

01-06-2025

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 such as Khloe Kardashian and Gwen Stefani have hit the slopes. Designed by 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 465-square-metre heated patio. But it's more than just well-appointed. As Eskenazi pointed out, the house is 'not nestled into a community flanked by neighbours' 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 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, a real estate firm that recently listed the property for $US65 million. (It sold for a figure 'in the high-$US50 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 on screen.'
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 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.'
Loading
Stephen Carter, production designer on the film, and the crew added faux-stone veneers and cedar panelling to cover up some of the house's bare walls, and he was responsible for details such as art and furniture, including a $US300 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.'
Loading
The cumulative effect of these details and the property in which they're situated suggests a kind of gilded cage — the perfect place to sequester four rich tech bros as society starts to collapse all around them.