Bleecker Street has released a teaser-trailer for Alex Gibney’s highly anticipated documentary Musk, and it’s not a flattering portrait of the SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink honcho and X owner.
Yes, the teaser begins with voices of some people heaping praise on Elon Musk – one idolator roaring he’s “the greatest capitalist in history!” But those encomiums are quickly followed by harsher appraisals from Musk observers: “He’s chaotic, random, capricious,” says one. Another offers, “He is manifestly cruel and selfish.” Yet another observes, “In a science fiction novel, he would not be a hero.”
Gibney’s film, which premieres Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, clocks in at just under 4 hours. He and Musk have already tangled on the X/Twitter platform, with the mega-billionaire branding him a “douche.” (To which Gibney amusingly retorted, “Douché.”). Leaving epithets aside, what can be said about Gibney is that he is one of documentary’s most respected figures, and the Oscar-winning director of Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, Zero Days and many other documentaries.
It’s perhaps worth noting that Gibney enjoys the backing of a multi-billionaire too – Wendy Schmidt, who bought a controlling interest in Gibney’s production company, Jigsaw Productions in 2025.
After Venice, Musk heads to the Toronto Film Festival. Bleecker Street plans to release it theatrically on October 16, with HBO debuting the film on premium cable and the HBO Max streaming platform after that. The documentary is expected to make a strong bid for Academy Award recognition.
In 2024, Gibney appeared on Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast and gave us something of a preview of the film.
“He is a larger-than-life figure,” he said of Musk. “People have their opinions about him, but I think the challenge… is to bring something that people don’t expect to find, something in the material that’s hiding, some stuff that’s hiding in plain sight, which is what I’d say we are finding that I think will be surprising for folks. And it’s not just like, is it Elon thumbs up or Elon thumbs down? I’m not really interested in that kind of formula, douche or not. But it’s more like, what do we really think about how he operates? And I’m pretty confident that what we’re coming up with will be illuminating and also kind of formally innovative. We’re really going to have fun with this.”
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