Musk threatens legal action over documentary

WASHINGTON – Elon Musk’s lawyers put the makers of a new four-hour documentary about the multibillionaire on formal legal notice days before its premiere, warning that the film defames him.

The Sept 3 letter from attorney Alex Spiro, addressed to a producer at Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, accuses the Oscar-winning documentarian of building the film Musk around a predetermined conclusion.

It also says Gibney refused to fact-check the film with the world’s richest man or the people close to him.

“This project did not begin as an inquiry. It began with a conclusion,” Spiro wrote.

The film premiered on Sept 8 at the Venice Film Festival to a lengthy standing ovation and strong reviews.

Gibney traces the career and life of the South Africa-born Musk from dot-com entrepreneur in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

It also delves into his personal life, including his difficult childhood and the 14 known children he has fathered with a series of women.

Trade bible Variety called it a “lacerating portrait”, while Deadline said the “damning” film had “thrashed” Musk as “petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel”.

The letter puts not only Gibney and Jigsaw on notice but everyone involved in the film’s release, including HBO, Bleecker Street and Universal.

It focuses in particular on a sequence that Spiro says advances a conspiracy theory: that Musk knew early on election night 2024 that Trump had won because his Starlink satellites had been used to influence the result.

Jigsaw hit back in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, saying scrutiny of powerful public figures is protected by the First Amendment.

This was something all Americans should defend, “including the associates of Elon Musk, who has proclaimed himself to be a ‘free speech absolutist’,” the statement added.

Gibney’s documentaries have often delved into powerful groups, including the Church of Scientology, the Enron corporation and Israel-Iran spy wars in Zero Days. He won an Academy Award for best documentary for Taxi to the Dark Side, which tackles the US military’s interrogation practices in Afghanistan.

On the grounds that litigation is “reasonably anticipated”, the letter from Musk’s lawyer orders the filmmakers to preserve every trace of the project, including footage, interview transcripts, research files and internal communications.

Musk has spent several days attacking Gibney on X, the platform he owns, calling the film a “hit piece that misses” and dismissing it as boring. AFP