The Elon Musk SpaceX series has been scrapped at HBO, according to biographer Ashlee Vance, who wrote “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” which was meant to serve as the basis for the limited series.
“Well, it’s super sad, but this long-running project with HBO has died. We were going to make a dramatized series about the early days of @elonmusk and @SpaceX,” Vance wrote in a Wednesday post on X. “Had some wonderful scripts. They were smart and funny and true to life. I imagine it would have been a massive hit.”
Vance went on to say that “Hollywood is hard,” noting that “HBO went through too many gyrations for this one to keep the requisite energy. People also seem afraid to make something about Elon.”
HBO did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
That said, Vance said the IP rights for the Musk biography have been “reverted” back to the author and are up for grabs by any other network or streamer. “If there are serious offers out there to make something amazing, my mind and inbox are open,” he said.
News of the six-episode limited series was first reported in October 2020, with Channing Tatum’s Free Association attached to produce the project, while Doug Jung (“Star Trek Beyond,” “The Cloverfield Paradox,” “Mindhunter”) was attached to write the script. EPs for the project included Vance, Tatum, Reid Carolin and Peter Kiernan for their Free Association banner. Musk was never attached to the project.
The description for the project was as follows: “In pursuit of his lifelong dream to make humankind a multi-planetary species, this limited series follows Elon Musk as he handpicks a team of engineers to work on a remote Pacific Island where they build, and launch, the first SpaceX rocket into orbit, spurring a new era of privately funded space exploration and culminating in the first manned Space X launch of the Falcon 9 on May 30, 2020.”
