Documentary on Elon Musk creates ripples in Hollywood

Trillionaire technology tycoon's former romantic partners share troubling accounts about him in new film releasing Oc Documentary on Elon Musk creates ripples in Hollywood Elon Musk's former romantic partners offer personal accounts of their relationships with the billionaire in Musk, a four hour documentary directed by Alex Gibney that examines his private life, business career and influence on American society. The film, which screens at the MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL before its nationwide theatrical release on October 16, draws on interviews with people who have known or worked with Musk. According to SFGATE, among its most compelling contributors are Justine Musk, his former wife, and Ashley St Clair, who has publicly said she has a child with him. Justine, the mother of Musk's first five children, discusses their relationship and describes experiences she says shaped her understanding of emotional manipulation. She also addresses the death of their first child and Musk's treatment of their transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson. St Clair, a conservative influencer, shares details of her early communications with Musk, including personal messages displayed in the documentary. The film examines their relationship and her decision to speak publicly. She reportedly declined a $40m nondisclosure agreement, although the circumstances and terms surrounding that reported offer have not been independently established here. Musk did not participate in the documentary. Gibney instead uses archival footage and an artificial intelligence generated avatar designed to represent the technology executive. The director spent four years developing the project. It follows Musk's career from early ventures such as Zip2 and X.com to SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink, X and xAI. Contributors include LinkedIn co founder Reid Hoffman, neuroscientist Sam Harris and journalists Kara Swisher and Zoë Schiffer. The documentary takes a critical view of Musk's business record and political influence, questioning his public image and examining his companies' relationships with government funding and regulation. These assessments represent the film's arguments rather than undisputed findings. Musk has threatened legal action over the documentary, according to SFGATE, but the publication reported that no defamation lawsuit had been filed at the time of its review. Elon Musk is chief executive officer (CEO) and largest shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025, and became the only trillionaire (in terms of US dollars) in June 2026; as of October 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$1 trillion. Born into the wealthy Musk family in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk emigrated in 1989 to Canada; he has Canadian citizenship since his mother was born there. He received bachelor's degrees in 1997 from the University of Pennsylvania before moving to California to pursue business ventures. In 1995, Musk co-founded Zip2, a web software company. Following its sale in 1999, he co-founded X.com, an e-commerce payment system that merged with Confinity in March 2000 to form PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002. Musk also became an American citizen in 2002. In 2002, Musk founded and became CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, a space technology company; the company has since led innovations in reusable rockets and commercial spaceflight. Musk joined Tesla as an early investor in 2004 and became its CEO and product architect in 2008; it has since become a leader in electric vehicles. In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI to advance artificial intelligence (AI) research, but later left; his growing discontent with the organization's direction and leadership in the AI boom in the 2020s led him to establish xAI, which became a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2026. In 2022, he acquired Twitter, a social networking service, and made significant changes, including rebranding it as X in 2023. His other businesses include Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that he co-founded in 2016, and the Boring Company, a tunneling company that he founded in 2017. In November 2025, Tesla approved a pay package worth $1 trillion for Musk, which he is to receive over 10 years if certain milestones are met, such as achieving a market capitalization of $8.5 trillion. Musk became the first US-dollar trillionaire upon the initial public offering of SpaceX in June 2026, though a SpaceX stock collapse brought him under the threshold by the next month. Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, where he supported Donald Trump. After Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, Musk served as Senior Advisor to the President and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The film presents a sweeping portrait of a figure whose business decisions and public interventions continue to attract intense scrutiny.