The first teaser trailer for Alex Gibney's much-anticipated documentary "Musk" has arrived ahead of the film's world premiere out of competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 8. The film will then travel to the Toronto International Film Festival.
The 48-second teaser leans heavily on imagery of spacecraft and astronautical hardware while a series of voices offer sharply contrasting assessments of Musk's character, without revealing much about the documentary's actual plot or structure. "He's possibly the greatest living inventor. He is the real-life Iron Man. He is one of the greatest builders of all time," one voice says early in the clip. The tone then shifts: "He is the greatest capitalist in history. He's chaotic, random, capricious, manifestly cruel and selfish. He's a fascist." The teaser closes with a stark verdict — "Elon is a nuke" — as a spacecraft is shown crashing to the ground and exploding into flames.
Gibney first disclosed the project in March 2023, saying at the time he was "many months" into production. Musk responded to news of the documentary on X/Twitter by forecasting it would be "a hit piece," prompting Gibney to fire back on the same platform: "how would you know?"
Running nearly four hours, "Musk" will feature an original song by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, titled "Let Me Sell You a Dream," written and performed by Byrne specifically for the film.
Gibney directs and produces the documentary alongside Jessie Deeter and Erin Edeiken for Jigsaw Productions, Dana O'Keefe for Double Agent, Joey Marra and Zhang Xin for Closer Media, and Anonymous Content's Nick Shumaker and Jessica Grimshaw. Ronan Farrow and Lawrence Wright also serve as producers on the project.
Photo: The Peabody Awards, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
