A corporation spent a significant sum of money for the rights to a film that is critical of how the wealthy abuse their power and is now considering shelving it. No, it’s not Coyote vs. Acme, a different one this time. It’s Musk, the apparently extremely in-depth look at the world’s richest man from director Alex Gibney. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal Pictures is seemingly having cold feet about putting out the documentary, which no longer has a planned release date.
Universal Pictures picked up the international rights for Musk for every region other than North America all the way back in 2023. By all accounts, the film is expected to draw a lot of interest, too. It reportedly received a five-minute standing ovation when it debuted earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival, and The Hollywood Reporter relayed at the time that members of the audience shouted “Thank you!” at the filmmaker as the credits rolled.
But it seems that perhaps Musk’s very public saber-rattling in response to the film might be making Universal flinch. After the film’s debut, Musk went on a Twitter tirade about the documentary and the filmmaker, calling the project a “psy op” and saying that Gibney is a “horrible human.” Musk’s legal team reportedly sent a letter to Gibney’s production company accusing the filmmaker of misrepresenting facts and threatening to sue for defamation.
None of that seems to have hit Universal Pictures directly, but it’s been enough to make the company reconsider its role in distributing the film overseas. The studio has yet to give the film a release date and, per The Hollywood Reporter, some in the company expect that it’ll just get shelved. Should the company opt not to release it, it’ll reportedly have to pay a kill fee and release the rights back to the filmmaker to potentially sell to a new distributor.
Gibney certainly doesn’t seem to have any more clarity than anyone else. In a post on Twitter, the documentarian behind the highly regarded Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief said in response to a question about the international release, “Ask Universal.”
It at least seems likely that the film will still see the light of day in the United States, but only because Universal isn’t involved in that side of distribution. That is being handled by Bleecker Street, and Musk is still set to make it to American theaters on October 9 in New York and Los Angeles (October 16 nationwide) before eventually before eventually making its way to streaming on HBO. Gibney confirmed that was still the plan.
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