Elon’s legal threats shadow HBO Max takeover, warns ‘Musk’ filmmaker
Alex Gibney says his Elon Musk documentary is running into trouble on two fronts—legal and corporate.
Television rights for Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary Musk sit with HBO and its streamer Max, and the filmmaker says he’s uneasy about how corporate dealmaking could ripple through the film ’s life after theaters. In a keynote conversation at the Toronto International Film Festival, Gibney flagged the chatter around Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount and noted Larry Ellison’s ties to Elon Musk alongside David Ellison’s leadership role at Paramount as reasons to keep an eye on the road ahead.
“I do worry about the storm clouds on the horizon. ”
Gibney’s warning lands while he’s already fielding pushback from Musk. On September 3, attorney Alex Spiro sent a letter to Gibney’s company, Jigsaw Productions, alleging the film falsely implies Musk used Starlink to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election and claiming the project started with a predetermined conclusion. Jigsaw has defended the movie as a fact-based examination protected by the First Amendment.
Legal fight and a CG Musk
Musk declined to sit for an interview, so the film leans into an unusual device: a computer-generated version of Musk delivering words he has publicly spoken. Gibney said lawyers vetted that choice, and it ultimately received legal clearance.
Separately, Musk has criticized the project on X, calling it a “hit piece.”
What the film covers
Written and directed by Gibney, Musk tracks the billionaire from his early years and Silicon Valley ascent through Tesla, SpaceX and his purchase of Twitter (now X), then into his growing political clout. Along the way, it gathers voices from people who’ve covered him or crossed paths with him, including:
- Justine Musk — Musk’s first wife
- Martin Eberhard — Tesla co-founder
- Kara Swisher — journalist
- Zoë Schiffer — journalist
- Geoffrey Hinton — AI pioneer
- Ashley St. Clair
Gibney has said the project grew in scope as Musk’s political profile expanded, which is part of why the runtime now pushes to nearly four hours.
Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 8. In the U.S., distributor Bleecker Street will release it in theaters on October 16.