Ahead of the theatrical release of the documentary “Musk,” which is showing in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles and will expand nationwide on Friday, Elon Musk has called filmmaker Alex Gibney a lot of names.

Over the past few weeks, Musk has posted on X that Gibney is an “idiot,” a “horrible human,” a “shill for the far left,” and a “tinfoil hat crackpot” with “zero credibility.”

When the documentary was announced three years ago, he called it a “hit piece.”

Following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last month, Musk wrote that dog feces are “worth more respect than Gibney.”

The trillionaire has reportedly not yet seen the film and did not respond to a request for comment from Reporters.

The documentary is confronting more than a mere war of words from Musk, however.

The film’s distributor, Bleecker Street, has been unable to run paid advertisements on several major social media platforms.

As of Sept. 25, YouTube, Meta, TikTok and X had all refused.

YouTube, where the trailer had been available through regular channels, and Meta have since reversed course, saying that it had been flagged for “political content.”

There are also concerns about whether “Musk” will eventually land on HBO as originally planned following the Skydance merger, the new entertainment giant created by Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

CEO David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, is friendly with Musk.

“Would Musk be able to call Larry or David and say, you know, don’t put this doc on? Yeah,” Gibney said in an interview with reporters.

“We live in that world now, particularly a world that’s become so transactional in the political realm … it’s literally pay to play.”

There have also been threats of lawsuits from Musk's camp.

But Gibney is also embracing it, posting regularly on X from his own account and through a newly created one called @muskfilmfacts, which is actively dispelling false narratives and highlighting suspicions of suppressed content.

Recently, Gibney wrote on X that his film is “about a ‘free-speech absolutist’ who has threatened a lawsuit to try to stop the film from being seen.”

The Oscar-winner learned from making his Scientology documentary “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” that the best way to fight back is to “not let them get inside your head.”

"We also retain a lawyer of exceptional calibre," he said.

"Because, naturally, we subject this sort of thing to meticulous scrutiny."

Gibney spent almost four years making the film, a sweeping portrait of the power and influence of the world's richest man, tracing his rise from his early days in Silicon Valley through SpaceX, Tesla and DOGE, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency that overhauled the federal workforce last year.

Spanning nearly four hours, it features on-camera interviews with members of Musk's family — among them his father, Errol Musk, his first wife and the mother of another of his children — as well as journalists, business associates, former friends, colleagues and government officials.

The project became a “runaway story,” said Gibney, who was finalizing a two-hour cut when Musk endorsed Donald Trump after the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

HBO leadership encouraged Gibney to keep going.

"I began making this film because it was about 21st-century power," Gibney said.

"At the time, I had no idea that he would actually come to accumulate the power of a kind of shadow president.

… But that is what he did, so we had to follow that story wherever it went."

Musk declined to sit for an interview, prompting Gibney and his team to resort to a somewhat unconventional approach: they produced a computer-generated Musk who addresses the camera directly.

The image may be a visual effect—both flattering and faintly uncanny—yet the voice and the words it utters are entirely Musk's own, drawn directly from recordings of remarks he has made in interviews and at public appearances.

Gibney's team employed artificial intelligence to help synchronise the words with his mouth.

One sticking point for Musk and his supporters that has emerged since the film began screening for press and festival audiences concerns “space lasers” and the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The source is a text exchange between Musk and Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children, who provided the messages.

Musk writes to her about feeling optimistic about Trump’s chances, and how he has “10,000 lasers in space right now.”

Its inclusion in the documentary has given Musk's supporters and his lawyers ammunition to discredit the film, citing an unfounded conspiracy theory about SpaceX's Starlink satellites interfering in the election.

But neither the film nor St. Clair makes that claim.

It simply presents his text messages and lets the audience decide what to make of it.

St. Clair also provides an audio recording of Jared Birchall, an associate of Musk, trying to negotiate an NDA with her, on which parental support would be contingent, after she gave birth to their child.

She said she turned down some $40 million to maintain her right to speak freely.

With attention increasingly fragmented in modern life, Gibney hopes there is some benefit in synthesizing information into a narrative.

He is also quick to credit the journalists whose work they draw upon.

The runtime may exceed that of your typical film, yet it remains an engaging watch.

For the initial 45 minutes, he remarked, “you’re kind of rooting for Elon.”

“He endeavours to propel those rockets into the atmosphere.

He fails on three occasions.

He then faces that pivotal fourth launch, and you behold those remarkable images of the reusable rockets.

It’s Elon at his finest,” he said.

“But then one must pose the question: what transpired?”

Gibney noted that a six-hour version also exists.

However, they condensed it in order to focus on the most critical information, such as questions regarding the data collected on U.S. citizens throughout Musk’s DOGE tenure.

“I hope that people will examine some of the material we present in the film and then take it further,” he said.

“You know, should there be a congressional investigation into the data and what became of it?

And is it sitting on a hard drive at SpaceX or Tesla?”

Regarding his perception of the intended audience, he expresses the hope that it extends beyond merely those skeptical of Musk.

“If you’re a member of a cult and you regard him as your supreme leader, then perhaps, much like the adherents of Scientology, you’ll denounce the film and refrain from seeing it,” Gibney said.

“But if you’re intrigued by the man, and even if you harbour a certain affection and admiration for his achievements, I would hope you’d go and see it.”