“Musk” is nearly here.
Alex Gibney’s hot button biographical documentary chronicling Elon Musk and his ascension is set to make its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Tuesday. But ahead of its debut – and the reviews that will trickle out afterwards – the production has released a teaser.
The trailer is framed around one of Musk’s SpaceX rockets – as the vessel travels up into the sky, we hear the initial comments about Musk, how he was “the real-life Iron Man,” one of the greatest capitalists of all time and a next-gen thinker. Then, as the rocket starts to wobble, there are more recent comments about his extreme narcissism and unchecked power.
Apparently Gibney, the Academy Award-winning director of “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” (among many others), began the documentary as a fairly straightforward portrait of Musk when he was just a Silicon Valley wonk. But as he continued to chronicle Musk’s life and activities, a frightening new dimension took shape, as he harnessed his technological and financial weight for unsavory ends and embedded himself within the Trump administration.
The official logline reads, “An incisive look behind the legend of Elon Musk, the world’s most heralded ‘investor-entrepreneur’ who has enormous influence on the world in which we all live.”
The 235-minute documentary will be released theatrically by Bleecker Street on Oct. 16. An even longer version will be released by HBO sometime in 2027.
