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A new scathing documentary about Elon Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival
Documentarian Alex Gibney has made films about Enron, Scientology, the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse cover-up, and alleged Russian election interference. His latest project about Elon Musk, Musk, just had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Musk, which premiered at Venice before a theatrical release in October, uses an AI avatar to simulate an interview with the world’s wealthiest man using his own words from real interviews — a choice Gibney described as intentionally ironic given Musk’s views on simulation theory.
According to Deadline‘s review, Musk portrays the world’s richest man as “as petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel, detached from humans at a personal level (including various ex-partners and many of his children) while purporting to want to save humanity by colonizing Mars.”
Since Musk declined to participate, Gibney told the press conference he encountered “a tremendous sense of fear of talking” throughout production, with critics, colleagues, and former friends refusing to go on record.
Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary premiered at Venice; reviews describe Musk as being “petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel, detached from humans at a personal level”
The person who did go on record — and who became the press conference’s biggest talking point — was Ashley St. Clair, the conservative political commentator and mother of Musk’s 13th child, Romulus, who was born last year.
St. Clair — who sued Musk’s AI company Grok, alleging its chatbot allowed users to generate sexually exploitative deepfake images of her and believes Musk is “extremely” dangerous to democracy — revealed she was offered $40 million not to participate in the film but turned it down.
“When you are offered something like that, it creates a debate about what your speech means and how valuable that is,” St. Clair said. “Why do they want to offer me this amount of money to not speak?”
Ashley St. Clair, who has a child with Elon Musk, says she rejected a $40 million NDA from him and was therefore able to be interviewed for #Musk.
“I want to set the example for my kids that you should never take being materially comfortable over speaking the truth.” pic.twitter.com/rEgcwMlwKA
— Variety (@Variety) September 8, 2026
“I hope my son only got his good qualities,” she added.
Musk is scheduled to be released in movie theaters in the United States on Friday, October 16.