The film stars Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, as well as John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, and Bill Paxton.

Through her friend Annie, call center intern Mae Holland secures a customer support position at The Circle, a tech and social media company.

At an outdoor company rally emphasizing the need for accountability in politics, The Circle's Chief Operating Officer, Tom Stenton, introduces Congresswoman Olivia Santos, who has agreed to open her daily workings to the public through SeeChange.

At the next meeting, Eamon introduces Mae to the crowd and they discuss her experience of the rescue, which moves her to become the first "Circler" to go "completely transparent," which involves wearing a small camera and exposing her life to the world twenty-four hours a day.

Her superiors cut power to her presentation, and the stage goes dark, but the audience activates their mobile devices, illuminating Mae, who reiterates her advocacy of transparency.

On December 15, 2014, Deadline reported that Tom Hanks would star in a film adaptation of Dave Eggers' 2013 novel The Circle, with James Ponsoldt writing and directing.

[3] In January 2015, THR confirmed that Anthony Bregman would produce the film through his banner, Likely Story, along with Ponsoldt, Hanks, and Gary Goetzman.

[3][4] On May 11, 2015, it was announced that Image Nation Abu Dhabi would fully finance the film, together with Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, while IM Global would handle international sales.

[1] In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside How to Be a Latin Lover, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion and Sleight, and was projected to gross $10–12 million from 3,163 theaters during its opening weekend.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The Circle assembles an impressive cast, but this digitally driven thriller spins aimlessly in its half-hearted exploration of timely themes.

[26] Glenn Kenny of The New York Times criticized the film for its repetitiveness and lack of originality: "The novel is at its most trenchantly funny when depicting the exhausting nature of virtual social life, and it's in this area, too, that the movie gets its very few knowing laughs.

But it's plain, not much more than 15 minutes in, that without the story's paranoid aspects you're left with a conceptual framework that's been lapped three times over by the likes of, say, the Joshua Cohen novel Book of Numbers or the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley.

"[27] Dan Callahan of TheWrap wrote: "The main problem with The Circle is that the evil of the tech company is made so obvious right from the start.

"[29] Gregory Wakeman of Cinema Blend panned the film, arguing that "the movie's grand philosophical debate is so simplistic and comes from two opposing and extreme sides of the spectrum that it's basically rendered mute."

"[32] Owen Gleiberman of Variety was positive as well, directing much of his praise towards the film's contemporary relevance: "You could call The Circle a dystopian thriller, yet it's not the usual boilerplate sci-fi about grimly abstract oppressors lording it over everyone else.

"[33] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle also praised the film's timeliness: "What makes The Circle so valuable is not only that it's showing us a ghastly possible path that the world may take, but that it articulates the mentality that could create and sustain it.