Filmmaker Alex Gibney said he still hasn’t heard from Elon Musk after the tech billionaire ranted about Gibney’s new four-hour documentary, Musk, and his legal team threatened to file a defamation lawsuit over the film.
Speaking at the Toronto Film Festival
Sunday, Sept. 13, Gibney said he “reached out immediately” to Musk, adding, “But he clearly wasn’t interested in talking” (via The Hollywood Reporter). The director also noted that, while making Musk, he and his team “made so many formal outreaches to him, and with the exception of his remarks on Twitter, we received nothing back.”
Musk premiered earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival. While it’s unclear if Musk himself has actually seen it, he swiftly attacked it on X, claiming Gibney had “zero integrity” and that the film relied on interviews with people “who either have an axe to grind or don’t even know me (but still have an axe to grind).”
Meanwhile, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent Gibney’s company, Jigsaw Productions, a letter threatening to file a defamation suit ahead of the film’s theatrical release in October. The letter focused on an exchange between Gibney and Ashley St. Clair — a former MAGA influencer who has a child with Musk — who shared texts Musk sent her before the 2024 election.
In one text, Musk told St. Clair he was feeling confident about a Donald Trump victory because “tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.” Asked to explain what he meant, Musk texted, “‘Lasers’ from space… I have over 10 thousand lasers in space.”
Musk’s attorney said this exchange essentially promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that satellites owned by Musk’s internet company Starlink somehow uploaded votes for Trump in swing states. “Starlink’s satellites communicate by laser inter-satellite link; that is what ‘lasers in space’ describes,” Spiro wrote (via NPR). “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.”
At the time, Jigsaw said the First Amendment protects its “right to engage in open debate and fact-based examinations of powerful public figures.” They added that those protections “should be recognized and defended by all Americans, including the associates of Elon Musk, who has proclaimed himself to be a ‘free speech absolutist.”
At TIFF, Gibney stood behind his work and said both lawyers and independent fact-checkers had pored over the film. But the Oscar-winner did admit he was concerned that Musk could face other types of censorship. The film is currently set to stream on HBO Max after its theatrical release, but Gibney said he was worried Musk could get stifled as HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery looks to complete a merger with Paramount. Paramount is run by David Ellison, son Larry Ellison, another tech billionaire and friend of Musk’s.
“I do worry about the storm clouds on the horizon and the fact that they [HBO] are in the midst of a takeover battle by Paramount,” Gibney said. “Larry Ellison, who is cited in the film, is one of Elon’s friends and one of the investors in his takeover of Twitter. And his son David Ellison has shown he’ll twist whatever facts are at his disposal in order to please the Capo dei Capi who happens to be the President of the United States.”
(After David’s company Skydance merged with Paramount last year, several Trump-friendly changes were made to CBS, a frequent target of the president’s ire. Meanwhile, Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery was approved by the Justice Department earlier this summer, but it faces an antitrust legal challenge from several states.)
Gibney said that, for now, he has yet to face any pushback at HBO Max over Musk, which is expected to hit the streaming service later this year or in early 2027. Still, he added, “It’s a great concern and the consolidation of the media and also the aggressive editorial takeover of the media by the tech barons is really deeply concerning.”
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