{"id":623849,"date":"2026-09-13T23:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T23:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/623849\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T23:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T23:36:10","slug":"alex-gibney-says-he-got-nothing-back-from-elon-musk-when-reaching-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/623849\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Gibney Says He Got Nothing Back From Elon Musk When Reaching Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMusk documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney<\/a> responded Sunday to a documentary legal threat from Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI reached out immediately\u2026 But he clearly wasn\u2019t interested in talking. We made so many formal outreaches to him, and with the exception of his remarks on Twitter, we received nothing back,\u201d Gibney said during a keynote conversation in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe veteran doc maker said Musk was heavily lawyered and independently fact-checked, so he\u2019s confident about the veracity of his account of the tech billionaire. But he told the TIFF audience he has \u201cgreat concern\u201d that Musk may not be widely seen as HBO Max, which picked up the title, is the subject of an ongoing takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount, which is led by tech barons like Musk. <\/p>\n

\n\tBleecker Street is set to theatrically release the nearly four-hour-long documentary in October and HBO Max is set to stream the film as the WBD takeover remains the subject of political and regulatory pressures. \u201cI do worry about the storm clouds on the horizon and the fact that they (HBO) are in the midst of a takeover battle by Paramount. Larry Ellison, who is cited in the film, is one of Elon\u2019s friends and one of the investors in his takeover of Twitter. And his son David Ellison has shown he\u2019ll twist whatever facts are at his disposal in order to please the Capo dei Capi who happens to be the President of the United States,\u201d Gibney said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo that is a deep concern. But so far, so good,\u201d he added. Gibney expects Musk to land on HBO Max later this year or early next year. \u201cIt\u2019s a great concern and the consolidation of the media and also the aggressive editorial takeover of the media by the tech barons is really deeply concerning,\u201d he argued. <\/p>\n

\n\tGibney\u2019s comments follow the Musk film world premiering in Venice before shifting to TIFF for a North American bow on Monday. The world premiere was followed by attorney Alex Spiro, acting for Musk, sending Gibney <\/a>and his production team a letter, alleging they had misrepresented facts about the tech mogul. <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Musk himself blasted the film as a \u201cboring \u2026 hit piece\u201d on X. The letter \u2014 confirmed by\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter\u00a0\u2014 focuses on what Spiro says is an insinuation in the film that Musk used his Starlink satellites to somehow influence the 2024 presidential election to boost Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier, Jigsaw Productions issued a statement after receiving Spiro\u2019s letter: \u201cAlex Gibney\u2019s films are consistently recognized for their in-depth, fact-driven explorations of influential figures and corporations, coupled with his bold and engaging directorial style. This approach has garnered him international praise, an Academy Award among other accolades, and a reputation that\u00a0The Times of London\u00a0recently lauded as the \u2018gold standard for fearless journalistic integrity.\u2019 The right to engage in open debate and fact-based examinations of powerful public figures is protected by the First Amendment \u2014 something that should be recognized and defended by all Americans, including the associates of Elon Musk, who has proclaimed himself to be a \u2018free speech absolutist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk is Gibney\u2019s most recent film and follows a career making documentaries that investigate powerful institutions and individuals. In Musk, Gibney looks at the tech mogul behind electric cars, space travel, social media, AI and more.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring his keynote, Gibney discussed Elon Musk\u2019s infamous DOGE purge and its impact on the independence and financing of USAID, the foreign aid agency. \u201cWhen you\u2019re into hundreds of thousands of people who are killed by performative cruelty, it\u2019s really a staggering moral stain on Elon Musk and the federal government,\u201d he argued. <\/p>\n

\n\tGibney also discussed Musk\u2019s use of stock manipulation, as well as securing government handouts and energy credits, as part of his exploitation of financial markets. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a con artist who has put in the White House another con artist, and they just keep running bigger and bigger cons, because there\u2019s no Department of Justice or FBI to tell them to do otherwise,\u201d he told the TIFF audience. <\/p>\n

\n\tGibney is also a producer of Edward Said: Between Worlds, a film about the late Edward Said, the Palestinian scholar, which is also screening at the Toronto Film Festival<\/a>. \u201cI just find him (Said) such a compelling public intellectual at a time when there\u2019s a dearth of public intellectuals who have engagement with such a sense of humanism, and obviously this is one of the great global scandals of this moment, the genocide in Gaza and the horrific things that are happening on the West Bank,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tGibney\u2019s other films include the Oscar-winning\u00a0Taxi to the Dark Side, The Last Gladiators, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, The Armstrong Lie\u00a0and\u00a0Citizen K.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Musk documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney responded Sunday to a documentary legal threat from Elon Musk. \u201cI reached out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[229633,321,605,93,61,60,233943,1998],"class_list":["post-623849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alex-gibney","tag-celebrities","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tiff-2026","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}