Elon Musk called Alex Gibney a douche. Gibney’s reply on X was “Douché.” That was almost three years ago, right after Gibney confirmed he was making a documentary about the world’s richest man. Musk never sat down with him, but Gibney made the movie anyway — all 225 minutes of it, with a 10-minute intermission built in.
Three years later, not much has changed. Five days before Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro put the production on formal legal notice, and Musk spent the days after the premiere calling the film a hit piece on X. Musk hits theaters next month from Bleecker Street. Here’s everything to know.
The TikTok Ad Ban
Amidst a limited theatrical rollout, the advertising account of Musk on TikTok has been suspended, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While the films official account remains active, the advertisements for the doc are no longer reaching users on the platform.
The distributor of the movie, Bleecker Street, was informed on Friday, Oct. 16, and is said to be appealing the ruling.
While the move from the TikTok is alarming for the usual reasons (several billionaire Trump supporters have stakes in the ownership of the platform’s US operations), headlines about the suspension could have a buoying effect for the doc image as a movie that the authoritarian powers here do not want you to see.
Even not being able to advertise can be a form of advertising.
The Plot
The film traces Musk’s rise from Zip2 and PayPal through Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, and X, and into his alliance with Trump and his run atop DOGE. Bleecker Street’s logline calls it an incisive look behind the legend of the world’s most heralded “inventor-entrepreneur.” A long stretch is devoted to Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving programs, which the film links to more than 60 fatalities, alongside sections on Musk’s drug use, his pro-natalism, and the dismantling of USAID.
Watch the Trailer
Gibney narrates the trailer himself: “Elon Musk is one of the most controversial figures in the world, so I decided to make him the subject of my next film. But it soon became clear Elon would not participate.” From there, it leans into Musk as a “chaotic” man who can sell you a dream. That idea runs through the footage and the music, which draws on David Byrne‘s closing credits song “Let Me Sell You a Dream.”
Who appears in the film?
Gibney interviews Musk’s father, Errol Musk; first wife Justine Musk; Ashley St. Clair, the conservative influencer who had a son with Musk in 2024 and refused to sign an NDA to secure paternity support; former USAID administrator Samantha Power; Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton; neuroscientist Sam Harris; and tech journalists Kara Swisher and Zoë Schiffer. At the Venice press conference, Gibney said he ran into an almost existential fear of talking among Musk’s critics, colleagues, and friends alike, and that many people turned him down.
Why is Elon Musk a CGI avatar?
Since Musk wouldn’t do an interview, Gibney’s team compiled an archive of what the film says is everything Musk has said publicly, then built a CGI version of him to deliver those words on camera with AI voice syncing. Gibney says the idea came out of Musk’s own belief that we’re living in a simulation or some kind of existential video game, and that pairing the avatar with video game imagery let him show both the reality of what Musk has done and the unreality of his narrative. Asked at Venice whether he feared legal blowback, Gibney said his lawyers signed off before the team went forward.
What was Elon Musk’s response?
Musk supposedly hasn’t seen Musk, but his attorney Alex Spiro sent Jigsaw Productions a legal notice on Sept. 3, five days before the Venice premiere, confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter. The letter zeroes in on the film’s suggestion that Musk used Starlink to influence the 2024 election.
Ashley St. Clair says in the film that Musk told her he would “unleash the anomaly in the matrix” and had “10,000 lasers in space.” Spiro argues the claim was publicly refuted in November 2024. Spiro also accused the production of refusing to fact-check with Musk’s team, writing that the project “did not begin as an inquiry” but “with a conclusion.”
Musk piled on from his social media accounts, calling the film a “hit piece that misses” and “boring.” Jigsaw responded by invoking the First Amendment and noting that Musk has called himself a free speech absolutist.
Release date
Bleecker Street will open Musk in New York and L.A. on Oct. 9 and nationwide on Oct. 16.
What are critics saying?
Reviews landed the morning of Musk‘s Venice premiere and they’re positive — a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 77 on Metacritic. Deadline’s Matthew Carey called the CGI conceit the film’s “most brazen and innovative technique” and closed his review by declaring, “Alex Gibney has made a lot of vital documentaries. This is his most important.” Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman singled out the self-driving section as “the biggest revelation,” writing that the film is “a lacerating and important watch.” The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw praised Gibney’s “excellent film” but dismissed the avatar as “a rather contrived visual joke, actually, which the film didn’t need.” IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio gives it a B and writes that “Gibney’s research is exhaustive even if his access didn’t turn out to be.”
Awards potential
Musk arrives with an undeniable Oscar pedigree. Gibney won Best Documentary Feature for Taxi to the Dark Side in 2008 and was nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room in 2006. There’s a song in play too: David Byrne wrote and performs “Let Me Sell You a Dream,” the closing credits track, co-written with the film’s composer Daniel Pemberton and built entirely from Musk’s public statements. Byrne won Best Original Score for The Last Emperor in 1988 and was nominated in song for “This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023; Pemberton earned a song nomination in 2021 for “Hear My Voice” from The Trial of the Chicago 7.
But Pedigree only goes so far. The doc branch is notoriously fickle when it comes to celebrity-driven documentaries. It’s a hurdle Musk will have to overcome if Gibney is to earn his third Academy Award nomination.
