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Elon Musk has hurled plenty of insults at filmmaker Alex Gibney in the lead up to the theatrical release of the documentary Musk, which is playing in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles and expands nationwide on Friday.
When the project was first announced three years ago, Musk dismissed it as a “hit piece.” In recent weeks, Musk has posted on X that Gibney is an “idiot,” a “horrible human,” a “shill for the far left,” and a “tinfoil hat crackpot” with “zero credibility.”
And following the feature’s debut at the Venice Film Festival last month, Musk posted that dog feces are “worth more respect than Gibney.” The trillionaire has reportedly not seen the film and did not reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The project is facing resistance that goes beyond public insult trading. Distributor Bleecker Street has struggled to run paid promotions across major social platforms. By Sept. 25, X, TikTok, Meta, and YouTube had refused advertisements. Meta and YouTube later changed position, stating the material had been flagged for “political content.”
Questions have also emerged regarding whether Musk will air on HBO as originally intended following the Skydance merger, which combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. David Ellison, chief executive of the newly formed company, is the son of Larry Ellison, a close friend of Musk.
“Would Musk be able to call Larry or David and say, you know, don’t put this doc on? Yeah,” Gibney said in an interview with the AP. “We live in that world now, particularly a world that’s become so transactional in the political realm … it’s literally pay to play.”
Legal threats from Musk’s legal team have also surfaced. However, Gibney has pushed back publicly, posting regularly on X from his main account and a newly created handle, @muskfilmfacts, designed to counter false claims and highlight potential content suppression. Writing on X, Gibney noted his project is “about a ‘free-speech absolutist’ who has threatened a lawsuit to try to stop the film from being seen.”
The Oscar-winning director drew on lessons learned while directing his Scientology feature, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, emphasizing that the key is to “not let them get inside your head.”
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“We also have a lawyer who’s really, really good,” he said. “Because, of course, we vet this stuff very carefully.”
Gibney spent nearly four years making the documentary, which offers a comprehensive look at the reach and influence of the world’s richest man. The narrative follows his rise from early Silicon Valley ventures to SpaceX, Tesla, and DOGE, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency that overhauled federal staffing last year.
Running nearly four hours, the documentary includes on-camera interviews with Musk’s relatives—including his father Errol Musk, his first wife, and another mother of one of his children—alongside journalists, former colleagues, business associates, and government officials.
The project turned into a “runaway story,” according to Gibney, who was wrapping up a two-hour version when Musk endorsed Donald Trump after the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. HBO executives prompted Gibney to keep filming.
“I started out doing the film because it was about 21st century power,” Gibney said. “I didn’t have a sense at that time that he was literally going to accrete the power of a kind of shadow president. … But that’s what he did, so we had to follow that story where it went.”
With Musk declining to be interviewed, the filmmakers adopted an unconventional strategy: creating a computer-generated avatar of Musk that speaks directly to the camera. While the visual representation is a digital effect, the voice and dialogue are authentic, drawn directly from public speeches and interview recordings, with artificial intelligence helping sync the audio to the lip movements.
A key point of contention for Musk and his allies since press and festival screenings began centers on references to “space lasers” and the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The detail comes from text messages provided by Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children. In the exchange, Musk expresses optimism regarding Trump’s political prospects, writing that he has “10,000 lasers in space right now.”
Musk’s supporters and legal team have seized on the inclusion to discredit the film, alleging it promotes unfounded conspiracy theories regarding SpaceX’s Starlink satellites interfering in the election. However, neither the documentary nor St. Clair make that assertion; the film simply presents the text messages for viewers to draw their own conclusions.
St. Clair also shared an audio recording of Musk associate Jared Birchall seeking to negotiate a non-disclosure agreement tied to child support payments following the birth of their child. She said she rejected roughly $40 million to preserve her right to speak freely.
With public attention fragmented, Gibney hopes there is value in organizing complex information into a single narrative, while giving full credit to the reporting that informed the documentary.
Despite the length, the director considers the story engaging, noting that during the first 45 minutes, “you’re kind of rooting for Elon.”
“He’s trying to get those rockets up in the air. Fails three times. He’s got that critical fourth launch, and you see those incredible images of the reusable rockets. It’s Elon at his best,” he said. “But then you have to ask the question, what happened?”
An earlier six-hour edit was condensed to focus on critical details, including questions surrounding personal data collected on U.S. citizens during Musk’s time with DOGE.
“I hope that people will look at some of the stuff that we present in the film and then take it further,” he said. “You know, should there be an investigation in Congress about the data and what happened to the data? And is it sitting in a hard drive in SpaceX or Tesla?”
Regarding his target audience, Gibney hopes the film reaches beyond established Musk critics.
“If you’re in a cult and you assume that he’s your supreme leader, then maybe just like the folks in Scientology, you’ll criticize the film and you won’t see it,” Gibney said.
“But if you’re intrigued by the guy, and even if you have some affection and admiration for his accomplishments, I would hope you go see it.”