Elon Musk threatened legal action over the documentary "Musk" after its Venice premiere
Elon Musk has threatened possible legal action against the makers and distributors of "Musk", an almost four-hour documentary directed by Alex Gibney that had its world premiere on September 8, 2026, at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Musk and his lawyer Alex Spiro claim that the film contains false and potentially defamatory implications, particularly in the section concerning the 2024 United States presidential election and the Starlink satellite network. The producers at Jigsaw Productions have broadly rejected those objections and said that they stand behind Gibney's work, emphasizing the right to fact-based scrutiny of public figures. As of September 11, it had not been publicly confirmed that a lawsuit had actually been filed, meaning that this is a legal threat and a request to preserve documentation connected with the film rather than court proceedings that have already been initiated.
The dispute erupted immediately after the Venice premiere, where the film was presented in the Venice Open - Out of Competition program. Official information from La Biennale di Venezia lists a running time of 225 minutes, with a ten-minute intermission, making "Musk" one of the most extensive cinematic analyses of Musk's public and private life to date. In the documentary, Gibney follows the entrepreneur's rise from his early technology ventures through Tesla and SpaceX to his takeover of Twitter, now the platform X, as well as his increasingly direct involvement in American politics. At the same time, the film examines Musk's family relationships, his approach to managing companies, his influence on public debate and the broader concentration of technological, financial and political power.
Lawyer claims the film creates a false implication about the 2024 election
According to a letter sent by Musk's legal team to Gibney and people involved in distributing the film, lawyer Alex Spiro believes that one of the documentary's most controversial segments may suggest to viewers that Musk influenced the outcome of the 2024 United States presidential election through Starlink. In that sequence, Ashley St. Clair, a former conservative influencer who has a child with Musk and appears in the film, speaks about his unusual confidence that Donald Trump would win. The documentary then shows her recalling Musk's cryptic statements about an "anomaly in the matrix" and "lasers in space", after which Gibney asks whether he meant Starlink. St. Clair replies in the film that she does not know what else such wording could have referred to.
Spiro argues that the editing, sequence of statements and context of the scene create a defamatory implication even though, according to available descriptions of the dispute, the film does not directly claim that Musk manipulated votes. In the letter, he states that Starlink was not connected to vote tabulation and accuses the filmmakers of failing to sufficiently verify the facts with Musk's side. The legal defense also argues that Gibney and his team began with a predetermined negative conclusion about Musk and did not accept their attempts to participate in the process of verifying the disputed claims. The producers have not publicly accepted that interpretation of the film, while Jigsaw's response focused on defending the director's investigative process and freedom of expression.
It is important to distinguish between what the film portrays and what has been confirmed by independent evidence. The mere fact that the documentary connects statements about the election, space and Starlink does not prove manipulation of election results, and Musk's legal team bases its central objection precisely on that distinction. According to reports about the letter, Spiro emphasizes that defamation does not necessarily have to be formulated as a direct accusation but, in his interpretation, can also be created through editing, the order of scenes, narration or the omission of facts. Whether such an argument will ever become the subject of court proceedings is not yet known.
Request to preserve footage, notes and communications
The legal warning was not directed only at the director. According to published information, it covered Gibney, Jigsaw Productions and companies connected with the distribution and exhibition of the film, including HBO, Bleecker Street and Universal. Spiro requested that materials related to the making of the documentary be preserved, including footage, interviews, research notes, fact-checking documentation and communications with sources. Such a request can precede litigation because relevant material could become evidence if a lawsuit is filed.
Under United States law, defamation disputes involving public figures face a high constitutional threshold. United States Supreme Court rulings have established that a public figure must prove so-called "actual malice": that the disputed statement was published with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was true. The standard does not exclude liability for defamation, but it strongly protects discussion of public figures and matters of public interest. Because no lawsuit has been confirmed, it is not yet known before which court any possible case would be brought.
In its response, Jigsaw Productions emphasized that Gibney's films are known for detailed, fact-focused investigations of influential individuals and organizations. The producers also stressed that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects open debate and fact-based scrutiny of powerful public figures. In doing so, they made clear that they do not intend to withdraw the film or distance themselves from its content solely because of the announcement of possible legal action. At the same time, according to available reports, their public response did not separately and comprehensively address every one of Spiro's objections concerning Starlink and the election.
Musk also attacked the film on the X platform
The legal threat is a continuation of a dispute that has been ongoing since 2023, when it was first announced that Gibney was preparing a documentary about Musk. At the time, Musk preemptively called the project a "hit piece", meaning a work intended to attack his reputation, and Gibney publicly responded by asking how he could know that before the film had even been made and shown. After the Venice premiere, Musk intensified his criticism again, posting a series of messages in which he described the documentary as biased, boring and dishonest and also personally attacked Gibney's integrity.
Musk did not participate in the making of the documentary. Before the premiere, Gibney told the Associated Press that some people he wanted to interview declined to participate because they feared consequences, while the director built the film around publicly available statements by Musk, archival material and conversations with people from his private and professional circles. Interviewees include Musk's first wife Justine Musk, his father Errol Musk, Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, technology journalist Kara Swisher, journalist Zoë Schiffer and Ashley St. Clair. The official festival list also includes Geoffrey Hinton, one of the world's best-known artificial intelligence researchers.
"Musk" was not conceived as an authorized biography. In his official director's statement, Gibney says that he wants to dismantle the carefully constructed image of Musk as an almost mythical innovator and examine his career from multiple perspectives. The film therefore also investigates how the power of an individual with major influence over the automotive industry, space infrastructure, satellite communications, artificial intelligence and global social networks is constructed.
An AI avatar performs an interview that never happened
One of the documentary's most formally unusual elements is a computer-generated avatar of Elon Musk. According to the Associated Press, the filmmakers used computer graphics and artificial-intelligence voice synchronization to construct a simulated interview, while using actual statements by Musk from previous public appearances. Gibney explained that the technique is intentionally ironic: it refers to Musk's own discussions about the possibility that humanity lives in a simulation while simultaneously questioning the boundary between the real person and the public image that he himself has constructed.
The director said that the filmmakers consulted lawyers before using such a technique. The production maintains that the avatar does not speak invented sentences falsely attributed to Musk but reconstructs his already recorded public statements. The technique therefore further emphasizes the film's theme: the difficulty of separating facts, self-presentation, algorithmically amplified messages and political influence in the contemporary media environment.
The film also deals extensively with X, the platform Musk bought in 2022 when it was still called Twitter and later renamed. Gibney says that while working on the film he increasingly focused on the way changes to algorithms affect the visibility of content and political debate. Zoë Schiffer offers a critical assessment in the film that changes to the platform amplified some inflammatory voices and reduced the reach of parts of traditional journalism. These are claims made by the documentary's authors and interviewees, not neutrally established facts about every individual change to X's algorithms; indeed, the interpretation of Musk's influence is one of the main points of disagreement between the film and its protagonist.
Ashley St. Clair among the key interviewees
Ashley St. Clair attracted a large share of the media attention in Venice when she appeared at a press conference alongside Gibney. According to her statement, she was offered $40 million as part of an arrangement that would have included an obligation to remain silent, which she rejected. That claim comes from St. Clair and is not presented in publicly available reports as a fact independently established by a court. Her participation in the film is significant because, through personal testimony, the documentary attempts to connect Musk's private behavior with the way he uses power in business and political environments.
St. Clair also discusses her relationship with Musk and circumstances connected with their child. The Associated Press reported that earlier in 2026 she filed a case against Musk's artificial intelligence company, alleging that Grok allowed users to create sexually explicit deepfake images of her, which, according to the lawsuit, caused her humiliation and emotional harm. That separate dispute illustrates how closely the film's themes overlap with current debates about the responsibility of technology platforms, artificial intelligence and the protection of individuals from synthetic content. For the dispute over the documentary itself, however, what matters is what was shown in the film and how it was presented, rather than the existence of other legal conflicts between Musk, his companies and individual interviewees.
Gibney has a long career in investigative documentary filmmaking
Alex Gibney is one of the best-known American documentary filmmakers dealing with corporate, political and institutional power. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him, together with producer Eva Orner, the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for "Taxi to the Dark Side" at the 2008 ceremony. He had previously been nominated for "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", and over the course of his career he has made films about Lance Armstrong, Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes, the Church of Scientology and other controversial individuals and institutions. That filmography provides important context for "Musk", in which Gibney once again applies an investigative and strongly authorial approach.
The project about Musk was publicly announced in 2023 and expanded considerably during production. Gibney told the Associated Press that the film was originally supposed to be shorter, but Musk's increasingly strong political involvement, his support for Donald Trump and his role in the Department of Government Efficiency initiative opened additional topics that the filmmakers included in the final version. As a result, the film does not remain at the level of a business biography but treats Musk as an example of a broader question: what happens when an individual with enormous private wealth gains direct influence over infrastructure, communication channels and political processes.
That approach is precisely one of the reasons the reactions have been so polarized. Gibney says that the film's goal is to examine how Musk constructs his own narrative about innovation, progress and the future of humanity, while Musk argues that the selection of interviewees is biased and brings together people who already hold negative views of him. Audiences are therefore confronted with a film that does not conceal its critical perspective but at the same time enters an area in which every serious factual claim may have reputational and legal consequences.
The Venice premiere opened a dispute that will continue after the festival
"Musk" was screened at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, which is being held on the Lido from September 2 to 12, 2026. The official program placed it outside the main competition, meaning that it is not competing for the Golden Lion but is part of the festival selection intended for prominent auteur and special projects. Following its world premiere, the film attracted major international attention precisely because of the combination of an exceptionally famous protagonist, Gibney's reputation and new personal testimony.
The United States theatrical release was announced for October 16, 2026, with Bleecker Street acquiring the United States theatrical rights. HBO had previously acquired television and streaming rights for North America, while Universal Pictures Content Group acquired international distribution rights. This means that the legal threat, even if it does not turn into a lawsuit, will accompany the film throughout its wider distribution and further increase interest in the way the disputed claims were formulated and substantiated.
For now, both sides remain in clearly opposing positions. Musk says that the film portrays him inaccurately and that certain editing choices create defamatory implications, while the producers defend the right of documentary filmmakers to critically analyze one of the world's most influential technology entrepreneurs. Without a filed lawsuit, there is no court record showing the full scope of any potential claims, nor is there a court decision confirming that any disputed statement is defamatory. The debate is therefore currently taking place in public, among the film festival, the media, the social network X and lawyers' letters, while the broader audience will begin seeing the film after it enters distribution during the autumn.
Sources:
- La Biennale di Venezia - official information about the film "Musk", the festival section, running time and production (link)
- Associated Press - report from Venice about the film, the AI avatar, Ashley St. Clair and Gibney's statements (link)
- PEOPLE - details of lawyer Alex Spiro's letter, the disputed election sequence and Jigsaw Productions' response (link)
- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - official information about the Oscar for "Taxi to the Dark Side" (link)
- Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School - legal standard for defamation involving public figures and the "actual malice" criterion (link)
- Bleecker Street - official film catalog and announcement of the United States theatrical release of "Musk" (link)