Ashlee Vance, who penned the 2015 book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, said that his unofficial biography “has died” at HBO and will not be adapted<\/a> into a series there despite being announced<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n However, Entertainment Weekly has learned that HBO passed on the project years prior to Vance’s announcement.<\/p>\n “Well, it’s super sad, but this long-running project with HBO has died,” Vance said on X on Wednesday. “We were going to make a dramatized series about the early days of\u00a0 @elonmusk and @SpaceX. Had some wonderful scripts. They were smart and funny and true to life. I imagine it would have been a massive hit.”<\/p>\n He continued, “Hollywood is hard. And HBO went through too many gyrations for this one to keep the requisite energy.”<\/p>\n Brandon Bell\/Getty<\/p>\n Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and lawmakers in the control room of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Tex., on Nov. 19, 2024<\/p>\n Vance also speculated that the entertainment industry is hesitant to dramatize Musk’s life. “People also seem afraid to make something about Elon,” he wrote. “As a result, the IP rights on my biography have reverted to me.”<\/p>\n The author held out hope that another network or studio would consider using his book as the basis for a screen adaptation. “If there are serious offers out there to make something amazing, my mind and inbox are open,” he wrote.<\/p>\n The Musk series was first announced in October 2020, with Star Trek Beyond and Mindhunter scribe Doug Jung attached as a writer and executive producer. Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin, Peter Kiernan, Len Amato, and Vance were also announced as executive producers.<\/p>\n Musk has become a more controversial figure in the five years since the project was announced. The billionaire purchased Twitter and rebranded it as X in 2022, and the platform has seen spikes in hate speech<\/a> that caused an exodus of advertisers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Musk also endorsed Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential election and spent over $290 million<\/a> on the Republican politician’s campaign. After Trump’s victory, he oversaw the Department of Government Efficiency that laid off at least 290,000 government employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n Musk also received widespread criticism after appearing to make a Nazi salute<\/a> at Trump’s inauguration in January, repeatedly villainized transgender people<\/a>, and stoked controversy with an antisemitic social media post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n The SpaceX HBO series was not the only Musk biography project in the works, however. In 2023, Variety reported<\/a> that Darren Aronofsky was adapting Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of the Tesla CEO. And Ike Barinholtz is set to play Musk<\/a> as a supporting character in Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a biopic focusing on OpenAI founder Sam Altman starring Andrew Garfield.<\/p>\n![\"Brandon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/360067eadc5a47ed37b09446757b4e88.jpeg\"\/)
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