Musk, the new documentary that Alex Gibney is directing about the ultra-wealthy mogul, will be released in North America by HBO Documentary Films. Universal Pictures Content Group has acquired international rights to distribute the film.
The award-winning Gibney has directed such titles as The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley the Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side. He also directed Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, a hard-hitting documentary about the sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. Gibney was described by Esquire magazine in 2010 as a filmmaker who was “becoming the most important documentarian of our time.”
In announcing the deal, Helen Parker, the executive vice president of Universal Pictures Content Group, said: “We instantly wanted to attach to this feature as we are big fans of Alex’s previous work and feel confident that he will deliver an insightful portrayal of one of the centuries most provocative characters.”
No release date has been announced for the Musk documentary, which is unrelated to Walter Isaacson’s biography titled Eton Musk. The movie had been shopped around at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 but was not given a public screening there.
It seems likely, however, that the film will be released for general audiences in 2024.
Few details are known about the content of Musk, though director Gibney has been quoted as saying it is a “definitive and unvarnished examination of [the] multi-billionaire tech entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter [now known as X].” Given Gibney’s hard-hitting style, however, the film will probably not try to sugar-coat its subject-protagonist. Musk himself called the documentary a “hit piece” in a 2023 tweet about the project.
Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions produced the film in conjunction with Closer Media, Anonymous Content and Double Agent.
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