VENICE, Italy — Tensions between Elon Musk and Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney have reached a fever pitch following the premiere of a sprawling, four-hour film that has drawn immediate legal threats from the multibillionaire’s camp.
Days before the project, titled “Musk,” debuted to a lengthy standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, issued a formal legal notice to Jigsaw Productions. In a letter dated September 3, Spiro accused the production team of building the documentary around a “predetermined conclusion,” arguing that the filmmakers failed to fact-check the project with Musk or his associates.
“This project did not begin as an inquiry. It began with a conclusion,” Spiro wrote in the notice, which was addressed to the production team. The letter explicitly extends its warning to all entities involved in the film’s distribution, including HBO, Bleecker Street, and Universal. Citing “reasonably anticipated” litigation, the notice mandates that the filmmakers preserve all internal communications, raw footage, research files, and interview transcripts.
The documentary provides a comprehensive look at Musk’s rise from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to his emergence as the world’s first trillionaire. However, it also paints a deeply personal and often unflattering picture of his private life, detailing his difficult childhood and his complex family structure involving 14 known children with various partners. Early critical reception has been intense; Variety described the film as a “lacerating portrait,” while Deadline noted that it portrays the entrepreneur as “petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, [and] cruel.”
A significant point of contention mentioned in the legal notice is a specific sequence in the film that suggests Musk possessed early knowledge of the 2024 election results because his Starlink satellite network was allegedly leveraged to influence the outcome. Spiro’s letter labeled this assertion a “conspiracy theory,” fueling the legal friction.
Musk, who has spent the last several days attacking the film on his own platform, X, dismissed the documentary as a “hit piece that misses” and labeled the work as “boring.”
In response, Jigsaw Productions issued a firm statement via The Hollywood Reporter, asserting that the scrutiny of powerful public figures is a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment. The production company pointedly noted that this protection is something all Americans should defend, “including the associates of Elon Musk, who has proclaimed himself to be a ‘free speech absolutist.'”
Gibney, known for his incisive examinations of powerful institutions and figures in films like Going Clear and Taxi to the Dark Side, has yet to comment further on the legal threats. As the festival concludes, the industry is bracing for a potential high-stakes legal battle, marking yet another chapter in the volatile relationship between the world’s richest man and his most prominent critics.
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