The Musk Documentary Minefield

On Monday, Elon Musk threatened to sue Rep. Ro Khanna over his assertion that the USAID cuts he engineered while overseeing DOGE for the Trump administration will cause millions of deaths. The exchange offered a stark reminder of the perils of confronting the billionaire class, especially with the world’s richest man having affixed a Bond-villain-like “trillionaire” to his resume.

At the same time, prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney is quietly seeking to finish “Musk,” a long-in-the-works documentary for HBO. Gibney, the director behind memorable examinations of figures like Julian Assange, Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, and Steve Jobs, declined an interview request, but a spokesperson confirmed he’s currently in postproduction on the film, which Bleecker Street agreed to distribute theatrically last year, before the project lands on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network.

Needless to say, taking on Musk is a daunting prospect, and threatens to be complicated by the fact WBD is in the process of being acquired by David Ellison-controlled Paramount. Facing such deep-pocketed subjects, the mere threat of lawsuits can send a chill up the spine of even relatively formidable parties. And as legal experts tell Status, with movies and documentaries on the runway tackling the likes of Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, there’s legitimate concern those backbones will be tested.