Musk Doc: Is Universal Too Scared of Elon To Release It?

John Johnston (0:00)

If Universal opps against releasing the movie, it would mark an extraordinary reversal at a moment when media companies are already under scrutiny for bowing to various forms of political pressure.

Hi everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well, there's drama about the upcoming Musk documentary that's premiered at the Venice Film Festival, been shown at the Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews and standing ovations. And Elon Musk does not like it. Now, is Universal too scared to release it? It's become a political football. I mean, one of the videos that I've done on this has 400,000 views. So there's certainly a lot of interest in this, I have noticed, and it's a free speech issue. Let's see what's going on. So today, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting, Universal was getting cold feet on releasing the Elon Musk documentary.

The Comcast-owned studio is not yet committing to rolling out Alex Gibney's movie that has paid millions to acquire for non-North American release before the political winds shifted. Now, as I said, Elon Musk is not liking this documentary. He's been scathing about Alex Gibney, the director, the filmmaker on this, and he's even threatened to sue. So is Universal getting cold feet about worldwide release? That's what we're talking about here. Now, it is gonna be released in the US, but we wanna see it. I'm not in the US, I wanna see this. But this is a free speech issue, and Mr. Free Speech Elon Musk does not like it. He's far from a free speech absolutist, as he said. More on that later, because there's so many examples of him not being about free speech at all. But The Hollywood Reporter says, when it's screened at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, Musk got the kind of reception every international distributor dreams about. Yes, indeed. Attendees applauded and enthusiastically for five minutes and saluted director Alex Gibney, even shouting thank you for his hard hitting investigation into the world's richest man. But despite that instant and reassuring focus group, Universal Pictures, which controls worldwide rights to the film outside of North America, now appears to be having second thoughts on a documentary it paid a significant sum to acquire. Fancy that. I wonder why.

The company has not dated the movie, has not communicated with the filmmaking team about its plans, and generally appears to be rethinking the release of a project that it once showed high enthusiasm for, but is now politically sensitive for parts of the Trump administration, and for Elon, who is the biggest donor, and of course to Trump, another shadow president doing doge. Yes, I'm sure a lot of pressure is being put on there, but stand by, there's another article, follow up article about this to the story, so it continues. Two people with knowledge of the dynamic who were not authorized to speak publicly tell The Hollywood Reporter that while a final decision has not been made, and several outcomes were possible, they believed the Universal would ultimately decide against releasing the film and return rights to the movie to filmmakers. I'm sure the filmmaker wants distribution. People want to see this, I know that. I know that for a fact from the comments and everybody watching. You know, there's so much interest in this.

When asked what its release plans were for the film, a Universal representative said it had no comment. The movie is set to premiere in the US theaters via the independent Bleecker Street, as well as play the London Film Festival next month. So people in the US will get to see this, which is great. But everybody else in the world needs to see this too. We want to see it as widely as possible.

Both are media rich affairs that a studio usually times with a release in the UK and even across the European continent. But Universal has made no such plans. Gibney did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. Now I looked at his extreme. He did say ask Universal when somebody asked him about this. If Universal opts against releasing the movie, it would mark an extraordinary reversal at a moment when media companies are already under scrutiny for bowing to various forms of political pressure. Yes, if you're not aware of that, that has been going on. Amazon backed out of releasing Artificial as it got into business with Sam Altman's OpenAI.

While ABC News and Paramount slash CBS News were paid millions to settle lawsuits with the Trump administration, many legal experts felt were quickly dismissed bowing to Trump. The media companies bending the knee and the tech brolegarks bending the knees, the Trump administration pretty quickly. Why would they do that? They got so much money and so much power they did not need to do that. Universal would be required to pay filmmakers a kill fee not to release the movie. According to a person familiar with the deal structure, the filmmakers would then be free to sell it anew, essentially allowing it to profit twice of the same rights sale. So people will see this movie no matter what Elon wants. He says it's about free speech, so it's going to look very bad if he tries to stop it, if he tries to sue to stop this coming out. No matter what it says, he said he's a free speech absolutist. He said that about the platform. It's just not the case. I mean, this might be a good time to remind people that Gil Geran, the author of The Nerd, Right, which is a great book, which I've been recommending, he's been banned from eggs. Imagine that. That's been on the down low. Not many people talking about that.