Alex Gibney’s long-gestating documentary about tech mogul Elon Musk is finally heading to the Venice International Film Festival for its world premiere. The documentary, titled simply “Musk,” arrives with an enormous, nearly four-hour runtime.
Musk, who has been outspoken in his criticism of movies like Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” previously dismissed the documentary as a “hit piece.”
Alex Gibney’s documentary on Elon Musk will premiere on the Venice Film Festival in September. The 232-minute feature was unveiled as a part of the festival’s official lineup by artistic director Alberto Barbera in Rome on Thursday.
In the course of the announcement, Barbera paused to emphasise the film’s extraordinary runtime, reflecting just how much of the controversial tech billionaire’s story is packed into the documentary.
“I invite you to have a look at the duration of the movie — 4 hours,” Barbera said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“[Gibney] traces the entire profession — the contradictions, and the conditioning power that’s centralized within the hands of a single man,” he added. “Consider a genius of capitalist entrepreneurship, but in addition a dangerous technocrat, with no moral scruples.”
Why The ‘Musk’ Documentary Took So Long To Finish
First announced in March 2023 as a “definitive and unvarnished examination” of the billionaire entrepreneur, the film endured an prolonged production timeline as Musk’s influence and public profile continued to grow.
Gibney reportedly accomplished an initial cut in early 2025 but later returned to the editing room to include major developments, including Musk’s political alignment with Donald Trump and his role co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Because the Tesla chief executive continued generating headline-grabbing controversies, many wondered whether Gibney’s project would ever truly be finished.
Backers HBO Documentary Movies and Bleecker Street acknowledged that challenge in a joint statement, noting that “the film continues to grow in scope because the story evolves.”
Elon Musk Branded The Film A ‘Hit Piece’
Musk has publicly expressed skepticism in regards to the project because it was first announced. After news of the documentary broke in 2023, he posted on X that the film was a “hit piece,” prompting a transient exchange with Gibney, who replied: “How would you realize?”
The SpaceX founder also once tweeted, “Gibney is a douche,” to which the filmmaker later joked that he responded, “douché.”
Gibney isn’t any stranger to investigative documentaries centered on powerful figures and major corporations. His previous credits include “Enron: The Smartest Guys within the Room,” the Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” and “Steve Jobs: The Man within the Machine.” He also won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2008 for “Taxi to the Dark Side.”
“Musk” opens in U.S. theaters on October 16, while HBO Documentary Movies holds the North American television and streaming rights.
Elon Musk Has Regularly Targeted Hollywood Movies
Musk has made a habit of publicly criticizing Hollywood projects he doesn’t support. Within the months leading as much as the discharge of Christopher Nolan’s epic “The Odyssey,” he repeatedly mocked the film, claiming the director was more focused on awards than historical accuracy due to his casting selections.
He also criticized Nolan’s decision to solid Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, accusing the filmmaker of “pissing on Homer’s grave” in reference to the legendary writer of the epic poem.
In response, Musk announced that his AI platform, Grok Imagine, would create what he described as a “historically accurate” full-length adaptation of the story.
Nevertheless, Nolan ultimately had the last laugh after “The Odyssey” debuted to greater than $264 million worldwide, giving the Oscar-winning director the largest global opening weekend of his profession.
Director Called Musk’s Views On Cinema ‘Worthless’
Musk’s repeated criticism of “The Odyssey” also drew backlash from filmmaker Scott Derrickson, who dismissed the billionaire’s opinions on cinema.
“Clearly @elonmusk doesn’t know sh-t about cinema & he stopped reading in his 20s,” the “Doctor Strange” director wrote in a since-deleted X post. “His opinions on art are worthless.”
Nolan also appeared to brush off the criticism during an interview with The Telegraph, arguing that conversations surrounding the film before its release carried little weight.
“But look, these conversations that occur before people see the film—they’re all the time irrelevant, because nobody having them knows what the film actually is yet,” the acclaimed director said.