Alex Gibney's Team Slams Elon Musk as 'Free Speech Absolutist' Over Documentary Legal Threat

Elon Musk has escalated his attack on Alex Gibney’s new documentary from furious social media posts to a formal legal warning.

The nearly four-hour Musk premiered September 8 at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation. The film examines Musk’s businesses, personal life and political evolution, including his support for President Donald Trump.

Musk declined Gibney’s request for an interview, according to the director. The filmmakers instead created an AI avatar that delivers statements Musk has made.

Musk attorney Alex Spiro sent Jigsaw Productions a letter September 3 accusing the filmmakers of misrepresenting facts and approaching the project with a predetermined conclusion.

The complaint centers on what Spiro describes as an insinuation that Musk used Starlink satellites to influence the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favor. The film features Ashley St. Clair, Musk’s former partner and the mother of one of his 14 offspring, claiming he told her before the election that he planned to “unleash the anomaly in the matrix” and had “10,000 lasers in space.”

“Starlink was not connected to vote tabulation,” Spiro wrote, saying election officials, cybersecurity researchers and fact-checkers had refuted such claims. “Defamation does not require an express accusation.”

Spiro also accused the production of refusing to engage with Musk’s team during fact-checking and said it would “proceed accordingly” if the filmmakers did not reconsider. No lawsuit has been filed.

Jigsaw defended Gibney’s record and answered the threat by invoking the First Amendment.

“The right to engage in open debate and fact-based examinations of powerful public figures is protected by the first amendment — something that should be recognized and defended by all Americans, including the associates of Elon Musk, who has proclaimed himself to be a ‘free speech absolutist,'” the company said in a statement.

Musk attacked the Oscar-winning filmmaker in a series of X posts, saying “dogs**t is worth more respect” than Gibney. He also accused the director of assembling a “hit list” of hostile interview subjects and called him a “Horrible human” with “ZERO integrity.”

In another post, Musk called the documentary “a hit piece that misses, and makes the fatal sin of being boring for 4 hours.”

Musk features interviews with St. Clair, Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, his father, Errol Musk, Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. Bleecker Street will release the film in select U.S. theaters October 16.