Trailer Released For ‘Musk,’ Damning Doc Portraying World’s Richest Man As Power-Hungry Cretin
A trailer is out for the eagerly anticipated documentary Musk, Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s brutal takedown of the world’s richest man.
As Deadline reported exclusively, Bleecker Street has moved up the theatrical release date of Musk to October 9, citing intense public interest in the film that features interviews with Justine Musk, the multi-billionaire’s first wife, Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of his many children, Musk’s father Errol, and many who have worked closely with the tech mogul. The documentary, which runs nearly 4 hours including an intermission, will expand nationwide after its Oct. 9 debut in New York City and Los Angeles.
“We have one person who’s this chaotic and has this much power. It’s completely insane,” notes one of many Musk critics in the trailer. Another takes aim at his Telsa vehicles, alleging, “This is a car that lies to you about what it’s doing,” before the trailer shows footage of a deadly crash that involved a Tesla driving on autopilot. St. Clair is seen in one of the film’s most troubling portions, where she describes Musk claiming to have advance knowledge of who would win the 2024 U.S. presidential election – raising the specter that he might have nefariously influenced the outcome.
“He had told me, ‘I can’t be president, but I can help Trump beat Biden,’” St. Clair tells Gibney. She reports Musk informed her, “I think we’re gonna win!’ He said, ‘I have 10,000 lasers in space. I knew that hours ago.’”
Musk, through attorney Alex Spiro, has threatened legal action against Gibney. Spiro warned the filmmaker the implication of vote rigging has been refuted, writing him, “You are therefore on notice, before release, that the insinuation is false.”
In an interview with Gibney at the Camden Film Festival in Maine, where Musk screened last weekend, Gibney told Deadline he takes seriously the threat of a lawsuit.
“He’s well-funded,” Gibney said of Musk. “And let’s just be honest for a moment and say that with our legal system, money talks in court in a way that it shouldn’t. It’s not like everyone is equal under the law. He’s got a bucket load of money, more money on paper than anybody on the planet. And so, is it a concern when braggadocious Alex Spiro fires a broadside and threatens to sue? Yeah, it’s always a concern. But what they threatened to sue about was patently ridiculous. They hadn’t even seen the film.”
Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 8, before heading to the Toronto Film Festival and then to Camden. Watch the trailer for the documentary above.
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