Universal is reportedly reconsidering its release of a revealing Elon Musk documentary, despite it receiving rave reviews at recent film festivals.
Weighing in at four hours (with a 10-minute intermission), Musk is the work of prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney, who secured access to various figures close to the Grok owner in his personal life, as well as those who comment on his political influence.
But while an informative documentary on the world’s richest man would likely put bums on seats, The Hollywood Reporter claims that Universal is now likely to drop the movie’s full release.
Universal paid millions for the rights to release Musk back in 2023, before the now-trillionaire fully aligned himself with President Donald Trump. Today, however, there’s reportedly hesitancy over launching the film, with the expected outcome now that the movie rights will be returned to Gibney for him to sell again elsewhere.
In a thread on Twitter/X, which Musk owns, former Wall Street Journal and NBC News journalist Matt Rivera recounted watching the documentary at Venice Film Festival, where it received a five-minute ovation, and listed an array of eye-opening details regarding the film’s contents.
These includes purported claims by Musk’s former partner Ashley St. Clair that the trillionaire knew the 2024 election result hours before it was made official due to “lasers in space.” The movie also includes Musk’s reaction to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting of his alleged drug use, and discussion of the NDA that St. Clair claims she was asked to sign after giving birth to one of Musk’s 14 known children.
The “lasers in space” claim previously caught the eye of Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro, who appeared to debunk the phrase having any other meaning than a reference to how Starlink satellites communicate in space. In a letter to Gibney and the film’s producers at Jigsaw Productions, reported by NPR, Spiro stated that the filmmaker had been put “on notice.”
“Starlink was not connected to vote tabulation,” Spiro wrote. “Election officials in multiple states, independent cybersecurity researchers, and fact-checkers publicly refuted the Starlink vote-rigging claim in November 2024, and nothing since has revived it. Starlink’s satellites communicate by laser inter-satellite link; that is what ‘lasers in space’ describes. You are therefore on notice, before release, that the insinuation is false, that the material refuting it is public, and that you chose not to be told the rest.”
In response, Jigsaw stated that it had a “right to engage in open debate and fact-based examinations of powerful public figures” protected by the First Amendment, “something that should be recognized and defended by all Americans, including the associates of Elon Musk, who has proclaimed himself to be a ‘free speech absolutist.'”
Other former partners and family members of Musk also feature in the documentary, though Musk (perhaps unsurprisingly) declined to take part. Instead, re-enactments of his public comments are made by a CGI replacement as a “literal staging of the film’s theme,” Rivera wrote, “a man who manufactures his reality.”
Musk has recently fired off a string of social media posts regarding the movie, dubbing it as a “hit piece that misses” and “a false film” that was also “boring.” Neither Musk or Spiro have seen the film, and the two sides have clashed over Gibney’s refusal to discuss its material with them, while Gibney has stated that Musk refused to take part and be interviewed.
“This isn’t the hit job Musk claims,” Rivera concluded, after watching the movie. “At times, it bends over backward to be fair. But it pierces Musk’s mythos, playing some stories twice to expose contradictions and posing open questions: What’s with all the kids? What is he doing with all that data?”
Universal ditching Musk would not be the only recent example of a distributor dropping a documentary that could make for uncomfortable viewing. Amazon previously walked away from the Sam Altman documentary Artificial, days after signing a $50 billion deal with Altman’s company OpenAI. Musk was also featured in that film, which will now see its release via indie distributor Neon.
The Hollywood Reporter also highlights the current situation with Musk’s streaming release, which HBO has paid for (and also contributed further funds to the film’s budget when needed during filming). HBO will likely soon be owned by Warner Bros., in a deal backed by CEO David Ellison and his billionaire father Larry. Musk reportedly features Larry Ellison in an unfavorable light — so it will be interesting to see if the documentary’s streaming launch goes ahead as planned, too.
Image credit: Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images.
Tom Phillips
News Editor
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
