Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ Premieres in North America as Director Calls For People to “Stand Up and Resist”

A polite but outraged crowd greeted Alex Gibney ’s epic four-hour Elon Musk documentary at the Toronto Film Festival Monday night, marking the film’s arrival in North America and offering a glimpse into how the investigative grenade might land in theaters when it’s released in October. “I found it very overwhelming. And that’s a compliment,” one of the people in the audience said. That filmgoer would know — she was Katie Drummond, global editorial director of Wired and a key voice in the film, who was seeing it for the first time. “What stands out to me is how all encompassing [Musk’s] reach and power really are,” she said from the stage, standing next to Gibney. As documented in a Hollywood Reporter cover story two weeks ago, Musk is a four-hour dive into the growing economic and social influence of its polarizing title mogul, sweeping through his fiefdoms that range from AI to social media to automobiles to outer space and questioning both the credit given him and the lack of skepticism about the power he has accrued. One standout section focuses on the secrecy-clouded four-month DOGE period in Washington in which Musk and people who worked for him potentially collected intimate data on tens of millions of Americans, possibly even for later political use. Gibney keyed on that aspect at the Toronto premiere. “Shadow president of the United States,” is how he referred to Musk at one point speaking from the stage, and added, “I think we’re recognizing that a few billionaires are trying to take control of the world and it’s up to us to stand up and resist.”

The audience applauded lustily after the movie ended, talking excitedly if nervously to each other as the lights came up and then shot hands in the air during a post-screening Q&A to ask about Musk’s power, filmmaking choices and, yes, potential resistance. At least one Musk stan did turn up at the screening, asking Gibney “would you rather live in a world without the accomplishments of Elon Musk” — a line Gibney parried back with “I kind of question the phrase the accomplishments of Elon Musk.” He added, “Tesla was not founded by Elon Musk; he was not the key inventor. SpaceX also was founded by a lot of powerful engineers.” The product of more than three years of shooting and editing (including a fresh round when its title subject ended up in Washington in 2024), Musk marks a career capstone for Gibney, who has taken on everything from Scientology to Enron to the U.S. military in past forays. The documentary arrives in North America after a blowout screening at the Venice Film Festival a week ago, where filmgoers openly thanked Gibney at the screening for the journalistic and democratic service he provided. The TIFF premiere also followed a conversation at TIFF on Sunday in which the director laid out the case for the film and said he got “nothing back” when he reached out to the mogul’s legal team after a threat. Musk is set to hit theaters in just a little a over three weeks. Distributor Bleecker Street moved the film up one week after A24 said it would drop its surprise Nathan Fielder-Lance Oppenheim documentary You Can See Everything on Oct. 16.