The new Elon Musk documentary is nearly four hours long, but its subject needed considerably less time to deliver a verdict. Musk called director Alex Gibney’s film a “hit piece,” attacked him personally and raised the prospect of legal action over one of its political claims.
Titled Musk, the 225-minute film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a four-minute standing ovation. It examines far more than Musk’s personal relationships, covering Tesla Autopilot crashes, his plans for Mars, government contracts, federal data access and his political shift.
Musk does not appear for an interview. Instead, the film uses an artificial intelligence recreation of his voice to read genuine quotes attributed to him. Variety reported that it remained unclear whether he had watched the finished documentary before denouncing it.
What do Ashley St. Clair and Justine Musk allege?
Ashley St. Clair, the mother of Musk’s son Romulus, claims in the film that Musk said he wanted to create a “legion of children” in preparation for a future civil war. She also says she rejected a proposed $40 million nondisclosure agreement because she wanted to speak publicly about their child.
Musk denied that offer existed. Responding on X, he wrote: “She was never offered that and has a history of making false claims.” Neither account has been independently substantiated in the reporting around the film.
St. Clair, a former supporter of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, told the filmmakers that she participated because she wanted her children to understand that financial comfort should not outweigh telling the truth.
Public reporting identifies 14 children fathered by Musk with four women. Their names include Romulus, Techno Mechanicus, Exa Dark Sideræl and X Æ A-12, which has kept copy editors gainfully occupied.
Justine Musk, his first wife, also appears in the film. She alleges that he described his wives as “breeders” and told her during their first dance that he was the “alpha” in the relationship.
How does the film address the death of Nevada Musk?
One of the documentary’s most personal sections concerns Nevada Alexander Musk, the couple’s first child, who died from sudden infant death syndrome in 2002 at 10 weeks old.
Justine becomes visibly emotional while discussing his death. She also disputes a later account Elon Musk posted on X, in which he said Nevada died in his arms. According to Justine, she was the parent holding their son.
The disagreement is presented as part of a broader pattern that she describes as gaslighting. Musk has not participated in the film to answer those allegations directly.
Gibney also interviews Musk’s father, Errol Musk, who offers a rather different warning about assessing his son: “Do not bet against Elon. You’re going to lose.” Other contributors include Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, artificial intelligence researcher Geoffrey Hinton and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Eberhard, whose history with Musk includes a long-running dispute over Tesla’s origins and leadership, says in the documentary that Musk has “an ego problem.” It is not the film’s most elaborate diagnosis.
Why does Autopilot feature so heavily?
The documentary’s larger argument focuses on whether Musk’s technological promises have repeatedly moved faster than the evidence supporting them. Tesla Autopilot becomes a central example.
The film attributes more than 60 deaths to incidents involving Autopilot. That figure is the documentary’s assertion, not an independently established total in the reports surrounding its release. Gibney uses the crashes to question how Tesla marketed driver-assistance technology and how the public interpreted Musk’s claims about autonomous vehicles.
Mars settlement receives similar scrutiny. Musk has spent years promoting plans to make humanity a multiplanetary species, but the film contrasts those ambitions with the technical and practical distance still separating promotional timelines from an actual colony.
That approach gives Musk a wider focus than a conventional celebrity profile. It is less interested in cataloguing eccentric product names than in asking what happens when one private individual controls companies involved in transport, communications, space launches, artificial intelligence and public-sector contracts. Apparently, diversification can also become a constitutional concern.
What political claims could trigger a lawsuit?
Musk’s lawyers objected particularly strongly to an allegation concerning Starlink and the 2024 United States presidential election. A legal letter cited by the New York Post warned Gibney against suggesting that Musk used the satellite network to influence the result in Donald Trump’s favour.
“You are … on notice, before release, that the insinuation is false, that the material refuting it is public, and that you chose not to be told the rest,” the letter stated.
The film also examines the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, and its access to federal data. That material feeds into Gibney’s broader concern about private control over strategic infrastructure and information systems.
At Venice, Gibney told Reuters that prospective contributors had been too frightened to speak publicly. He described Musk as “extremely” dangerous to democracy and accused him of pursuing an international right-wing agenda for both ideological and financial reasons.
Musk responded on X by calling Gibney a “horrible human” and dismissing the film as a hostile attack. Radio Times offered a different assessment, describing it as “far from a hatchet job,” though also “a little one-sided.” Screen Daily found it persuasive but occasionally too polished.
When will the public be able to watch it?
Following Venice, the documentary is scheduled to screen at the Toronto and London film festivals. Bleecker Street plans to release it in United States cinemas on October 16, with an HBO Max release expected later.
Gibney announced the project in 2023 after making documentaries about subjects including Elizabeth Holmes, Scientology and United States military torture practices in the Middle East. His latest film applies the same investigative approach to a businessman whose companies now intersect with government policy, national infrastructure and electoral politics.
No substantive development had emerged by September 10 regarding Musk’s threatened legal action. For now, there is a public denunciation, a legal warning and a lengthy documentary preparing for wider release. The courtroom portion of the programme remains unscheduled.
