The director behind investigations into Enron, Stuxnet, Theranos, and more is now looking into one of the biggest personalities in tech.
If the constant deluge of news about Elon Musk hasn’t been enough for you, there’s good news: a new documentary about him is in the works from filmmaker Alex Gibney, who’s directed movies like Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, Zero Days, and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. It aims to be “a rigorous portrait of Elon Musk,” said Zhang Xin, a producer for the film, according to Variety.
Right now, the project is just titled Musk, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Other than the name and the general vibe that it’ll be taking a hard look at one of the world’s richest men and most famous tech CEOs, there currently aren’t a lot of details about the documentary. There’s no release date (or even release year), and it’s unclear if it’ll focus on certain aspects of Musk’s businesses or personal life, or try to cover them in general. Gibney says he’s been working on it “off and on, for some time” according to Deadline.
This won’t be the first documentary about Musk. He was the subject of 2018’s Elon Musk: The Real Life Iron Man and a 2022 BBC program simply called The Elon Musk Show. He’s also featured in Netflix’s Return to Space, which covers aerospace company SpaceX, and a movie about AI called Do You Trust This Computer?
Gibney has a reputation for being critical and incisive. He’s helped scrutinize Enron, Volkswagen, the Church of Scientology, and more in documentaries like The Smartest Guys in the Room, Dirty Money, and Going Clear. He’s also been relatively critical of Musk in the past, so I personally wouldn’t expect Musk to end up being a puff piece. But while I’ve enjoyed plenty of Gibney’s previous work, and know he’s very adept at simplifying and explaining complex topics, I do wonder if it’s even possible to understand and communicate whatever’s going on at Twitter these days.
