‘Musk’: Was Universal Getting Cold Feet Over Releasing Alex Gibney Doc?

A couple days ago a THR report claimed that Universal was getting cold feet over releasing Alex Gibney’s Musk documentary in international territories.

Despite the film opening theatrically in the U.S. in a few weeks (via Bleecker Street), no international dates had been revealed. The filmmakers were surprised and a little concerned, according to the report.

Last night, a spokesperson for Universal told us and others that the studio has no plans to ditch the film. We’ve now had it confirmed this morning, following Puck’s initial report, that Universal is lining up a Q1, 2027 release.

What to make of the cold feet suggestion? These type of reports don’t usually come out of thin air. I was reminded of our recent exclusive about Venice cancelling its jury press conference, then rowing back on those plans after our story triggered backlash. So, we did some digging.

For reasons I’ll get into, the filmmakers probably had cause to at least question Universal’s commitment. It’s somewhat unusual these days for a high-profile film with an imminent U.S. release not to have any international dates on the calendar.

The reality seems to be that nothing had been firmly decided one way or another. Sources indicated to us yesterday that Universal had been carrying out an internal legal review of the film after getting the final copy of the movie just shortly before its Venice Film Festival world premiere. The studio didn’t deny a legal review to us when we put it to them yesterday.

This review, which is seemingly now complete, probably felt more essential after Musk’s lawyers reportedly sent a legal complaint about the film to Gibney’s production company Jigsaw. Supposedly, the film’s distributors were mentioned in the letter, which was seemingly leaked to the New York Post.

There was also surprise in some quarters that Universal’s logo hadn’t appeared on screen before the film’s launch in Venice. And that the studio had taken an unusually light-touch approach to the film’s international engagements, including press on the Lido. But Uni hadn’t blocked the Venice launch or its announced screening at the London Film Festival. Rather than ditching the movie, the studio was seemingly going through a process to determine whether it faced a legal challenge it didn’t want to grapple with.

The context is also important here and probably speaks to potential filmmaker fears over their politically spicy project being jettisoned. Amazon, which ploughed millions into a fawning Melania Trump movie, recently ditched its Sam Altman biopic, Artificial, about the birth of OpenAI, with whom it has a hugely lucrative AI contract. Trump biopic The Apprentice was avoided by the major studios and then faced significant challenges before release. Even at the arthouse level, lauded films with strong political stances have been shied away from. No Other Land, The Voice Of Hind Rajab, and now NAZA? A chill has descended on Hollywood since Trump came to power with studios and indies increasingly anxious about tackling political and anti-establishment fare. We heard a long time back that at least one significant Hollywood financier detached themselves from Musk when it became clear it wouldn’t be a flattering portrait of its subject.

So, kudos to Bleecker for sticking with the film theatrically stateside. And to Universal for seemingly sticking with the film, which has been reviewed well by critics and comes from one of the great American documentarians. Let’s hope it’s not buried by the studio overseas and it gets its due.

The next and most obvious question is what happens with the film’s U.S. TV and streaming release via HBO. Will Musk-Trump-Ellison politics and connections get in the way of that release? Paramount owner David Ellison is of course in the throes of acquiring Warner Bros and has already proven to be more than amenable to Trump and allies. Puck’s report this morning noted that HBO is also lining up for a Q1 2027 stateside release. We’ve reached out to WBD for confirmation of that.

The home ent plans will be just as telling as the theatrical ones. This project became a home ent play in many ways with HBO initially acquiring it in a splashy U.S. deal and it’s a Universal Pictures Content Group acquisition, rather than big Universal, so home ent was always key. Will it get good play on a TV service like Sky in the UK, for example? We’ll see.