Timing is almost everything in Hollywood.
Case in point: If you have a conspiratorial hit piece about one of the most famous entrepreneurs on the planet, you shouldn’t release it when he just stunned the world.
Again.
Mere days ago, Elon Musk unveiled the first flying car. Yes, the man behind Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink gave us what Doc Brown could only imagine.
Finally…flying cars @Tesla
— Christopher Lloyd (@DocBrownLloyd) October 16, 2026
Perhaps that soured potential moviegoers on a film that attacks Musk from all angles, according to early reviews of director Alex Gibney’s “Musk.”
The film, clocking in at nearly four hours, earned an anemic $297,O00 as it expanded to 472 theaters over the weekend. That’s much smaller than a traditional film release – think 3-4,000 theaters for mainstream titles.
Still, given the enormous hype, fawning press coverage and rapturous reviews (97 percent “Fresh” at RottenTomatoes.com) it should have flown much higher.
Unless EDS (Elon Derangement Syndrome) afflicts fewer people than we realized. Remember, some experts told us Musk was a Nazi due to an awkward hand salute he gave during a speech.
Sorry. “Experts.”
As a person with a *strong* track record of criticizing Elon Musk, I feel extremely confident asserting that this was not a Nazi salute. Elon Musk is a friend to the Jews. This is a man with Aspergers exuberantly throwing his heart to the crowd. We don’t need to invent outrage.
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) January 20, 2025
A few essential caveats.
Documentaries generally make far less than narrative films. This weekend’s results for “You Can See Everything,” a quasi-documentary about convicted cheat Elizabeth Holmes, are a bold exception. The film earned a stunning $15 million in its opening weekend on less than 1,000 screens.
Few films can boast a four-hour running time and except to draw a big crowd.
Still, the spin is already forming to defend “Musk’s” poor box office showing. Gold Derby partially blamed the lousy sales on the film’s TikTok account being banned.
Yeah, that was the game changer.
There’s a real story behind some temporary social media bans impacting the film’s rollout, although that happened several weeks ago. And the same media outlets complaining haven’t spoken out against The Twitter Files, comedians getting censored for telling the wrong jokes, and other speech infringements.
(A noteworthy aside for full context)
Perhaps audiences were turned off after learning “Musk” couldn’t get the actual person on the record for an interview. So the film uses an A.I. version of Musk to be interrogated.
An Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker attempted that. Let that sink in.
Or, perhaps the film’s crazed suppositions scared audiences away. Do movie theaters allow patrons to wear tinfoil hats?
No matter. “Musk” may still have serious Oscar hopes, given Musk’s right-leaning nature and the Left’s fury at him for his quasi-Trump support.
That flies in the face of audience indifference for “Musk.”
Photo Credit: AP / Image supplied by Bleecker Street media relations.
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