The new four-hour documentary “Musk” opens with a view of Earth from outer space. The planet gleams against the dark background before it quickly explodes into a ball of flame. It’s a foreboding image to preface a film about the richest and arguably most powerful man alive, Elon Musk.
The movie is the product of four years of work from director Alex Gibney, whose previous films have investigated Scientology (“Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”) and Elizabeth Holmes (“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley”). Gibney initially approached the film as something of a Musk fan, an owner of a Tesla energy storage system and solar panels. But over the course of his research, it’s clear that he becomes skeptical of Musk’s mythic image, eventually equating his fanbase with cultists. Musk refused to participate in the film, so the filmmakers made a macho-looking artificial intelligence avatar of the tech titan that delivers lines pulled from archival interviews. It’s an uncanny but effective way of working around the lack of access.
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Debuting in theaters nationwide on Oct. 16, the film generously includes a much-needed intermission. Although Musk’s father does make an appearance, his childhood in South Africa is largely glossed over, instead tracing Elon’s career beginning with his earliest enterprise, the online city guide website Zip2. Its sale to Compaq Computer in 1999 earned him his first big payout: $22 million. Next comes the early payment platform X.com, which Musk was edged out of but still earned him another massive payday, to the tune of $180 million. Then came SpaceX, followed by Tesla, Starlink, Twitter, xAI and the Department of Government Efficiency, with running themes that Musk overpromises, underperforms, takes credit for others’ work and somehow keeps failing upward.
If you’re the type of news addict who’s followed Musk’s career closely over the past decade, there won’t be much breaking news here, but seeing the full arc of Musk’s triumphs and ineptitudes hammers home his immense power and underlying darkness. His environmental influence via Tesla is undercut by the irresponsible rollout of autonomous driving and shady abuse of carbon credit programs. One of his superpowers, according to the filmmakers, is his uncanny ability to milk money from the federal government ($21 billion in government funds for SpaceX alone). Dodging government regulation is another one of his biggest strengths, with DOGE’s cuts coincidentally overlapping with agencies investigating his companies. However when it comes to saving the government money, his DOGE project fails miserably, ending up inflating the deficit due to the firing of thousands of IRS officers.
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Prominent featured talking heads include Musk’s PayPal colleague and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and former friend and neuroscientist Sam Harris, plus tech journalists Kara Swisher and Zoë Schiffer. They all offer damning perspectives on Musk’s evolution over the years, from engineering wunderkind to “mad technoking” and ruthless dismantler of the federal government.
The most compelling voices are Musk’s former romantic partners. The father of 14 children (that we know about), Musk has remarked that he wants a “legion” of offspring. Grimes and Shivon Zilis (with whom he had a recent public falling out) are not interviewed, but the filmmakers speak extensively with Justine Musk, the mother of his first five children, and Ashley St. Clair, a conservative influencer who recently revealed she also had a child by Elon.
Justine remarked how she came to understand the term gaslighting from her husband, how he’d tell her 15 things wrong with her and once said that if she were his employee, he would fire her. She also goes into details regarding the death of their first child and his reprehensible treatment of their transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson. St. Clair offers the most salacious details. She describes Elon’s DMs on X as a “gatling gun of sperm,” insinuating that she’s far from the only woman he’s pursued online. She turned down a massive $40 million nondisclosure agreement, freeing her to share messages from their early courtship, as well personal texts, many of which are shown on-screen. Although candid, she dodges some lines of questioning, including about Elon’s reported drug use. But she does go so far as to question the certainty with which he viewed President Donald Trump’s reelection, stopping just short of implying a conspiracy (Elon has threatened the film with a defamation suit but has not filed one).
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Overall, “Musk” is an expertly crafted documentary and feels like a definitive portrait of a man who at just age 55 has had unparalleled influence on American life. For those who’ve followed his career over the years, though, there won’t be many fresh revelations, and the four-hour runtime makes watching it feel like running a marathon. The film concludes just like it begins, with an exploding image of Earth. For all his power, the film implies, Musk is no longer aiming his influence at saving the planet — he’s much more likely to lead to its demise.

Marvel Television announced a new live-action television series titled Zodiac.
The series, revealed at New York Comic-Con on Thursday, is a spy thriller and is set for release in 2028, per the studio.
Zodiac will join a waning live-action TV slate at Marvel, where many of the franchise’s most popular titles have either already ended or soon will. The WandaVision trilogy is coming to its conclusion later this month with the release of VisionQuest.
The Vision spinoff, headlined by Paul Bettany, is said to take place after the events in WandaVision where the character made a return after Thanos killed him in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. The new series is believed to follow Vision (Bettany) as he tries to regain his memory and humanity.
Daredevil: Born Again, which welcomed several beloved characters back into the MCU including Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock and Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, will end with Season 3 next year.
The studio also recently reneged on a second season of Wonder Man.

JB Perrette has moved quickly to put together the executives that will report to him at Skydance.
Perrette, who is Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance TV and Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance Direct-To-Consumer, oversees global distribution, advertising sales, content sales, DTC strategy, marketing and business operations across Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery’s new owner.
Deadline understands that Perrette has signed a new contract, like a number of David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz’s top team. It’s not clear how long Perrette has signed up for, but his colleagues Casey Bloys, who he worked closely with at WBD, signed a five-year deal earlier this month.
He has gotten straight to work; earlier today, he named three executives to oversee content sales, advertising and distribution for him.
David Decker has been named President, Content Sales, coming ahead of the Mipcom international TV market, Jay Askinasi is Chief Revenue Officer, Advertising and Ray Hopkins is President, Distribution.
Decker’s appointment has also led to the first executive from this group to depart following the merger; Kevin MacLellan, who was President of International and Global Content Distribution at Paramount, is exiting, as a result.
Insiders told Deadline that it was important for the divisions that bring in revenue to Skydance to get their houses in order sooner rather than later, compared to the content divisions that are still working out personnel decisions.
Perrette is an interesting case; he was previously CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games for Warner Bros. Discovery and one of David Zaslav’s key lieutenants. But over the last few years, he has built up a key partnership with Bloys as the pair oversaw the growth of the HBO Max streaming service, Bloys on the content side, and Perrette on the business side. He will also now work closely with George Cheeks, who is Co-Chair and Chief Content Officer, Skydance TV.

Crystal Hefner is begging Jessica Biel to think twice before playing Hugh Hefner’s wife in an upcoming movie … warning her not to romanticize the Playboy founder or his world.
Here’s the deal … Variety reported earlier this week that Jessica is joining the cast of “Playmates” … a movie set around the Playboy brand.
The film is not a Hugh Hefner biopic, and Hugh is not the main character. However, Bill Pullman is playing Hefner, while Jessica has been cast as a fictional version of his wife.
Crystal — to who was married to Hugh from 2012 until he died in 2017 — shared a direct message she sent Jessica on Instagram, expressing concern the movie could glorify him and Playboy.
In the message, Crystal says she experienced “sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse” during her marriage to Hugh … and claims numerous other women have made similar allegations.
She also references what she calls “troubling concerns regarding minors” and asks Jessica to reconsider the project if it romanticizes Hugh or the Playboy world.
Crystal ends by urging everyone involved in the film — “especially the ladies” — to think twice before helping boost Playboy’s image.

True crime fans, this is the best news you’ll (Karen) Read all day.
Amazon Prime Video has officially ordered the scripted Karen Read series starring and executive produced by Elizabeth Banks (Cocaine Bear, Pitch Perfect). The currently untitled eight-episode (each episode is one hour) drama series inspired by the Law&Crime and Audible Original podcast Karen will be written, showrun and executive produced by Justin Noble (The Sex Lives Of College Girls, Brooklyn Nine-Nine). Banks will play Read.
The series hails from Warner Bros. Television; Brownstone Productions, David E. Kelley Productions (Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Big Little Lies), Audible and Law&Crime will serve as executive producers. In 2025, when Amazon announced it was developing the series, Read had a strong reaction.
“I have nothing to do with that; it’s not authorized by me in any way,” Read said during an interview with WRKO host Howie Carr. Her attorney Alan Jackson said that Read’s story is “Karen Read’s story to tell.”
Karen Read wants to tell her story through LBI Entertainment (Hell or High Water) — and a book deal.
Here’s the short version of Read’s story: “When a Boston police officer is found dead in the snow during a blizzard, all eyes are on his girlfriend, Karen Read. But when she and her legal team claim she’s not only innocent, but that she’s the victim of a conspiracy protecting the real assailants, the story spreads like wildfire, dividing a community in ways they’ve never seen,” the Amazon series’ synopsis reads. “As endless suspicion mounts, in multiple directions, this genre-bending true crime series explores society’s explosive obsession with true crime.”
“I grew up in Massachusetts, and like so many people there, we watched this case divide families, friends, and entire towns,” Banks said in a statement. “We have spent years with this material because the questions it raises go far beyond one courtroom: why we choose the stories we believe, and what happens when trust in our institutions breaks down. Justin has written a series that respects and treats with care the complexity of what happened and the public reaction to it. We are grateful to Prime Video, Warner Bros. Television and our partners at David E. Kelley Productions, Wondery and Law&Crime for believing in it from the start.”
“This case has more twists and turns than any story I’ve ever consumed, real or fictional,” said Noble. “It makes M. Night Shyamalan look like Nora Ephron. But the reason this story resonates and must be told is because of the profound takeaways it leaves us with: about a deeply imperfect justice system that urgently needs change, about the mistreatment of women by those who weaponize and abuse their power, and about a victim who deserves to be remembered.”
In addition to Banks and Noble, the series is executive produced by Max Handelman, Krissy Wall, David E. Kelley, Matthew Tinker, Aaron Hart, Marshall Lewy, Jeni Mulein, Jen Sargent, Rachel Stockman and Dan Abrams. The project came to Audible via its integration with Wondery; Hart shepherded the project.
“At its core, this series is about more than a single case — it’s about what happens when truth becomes a matter of perspective and an entire community is forced to confront its own deepest divisions,” said Peter Friedlander, head of global television, Amazon MGM Studios. “With Justin Noble’s sharp, nuanced storytelling, Elizabeth Banks’ captivating presence, and the powerhouse creative team behind this project, we believe this will be a defining series that sparks conversation around the world.”
Marshall Lewy, head of Audible content, North America, commented: “The Karen Read case gripped the country because it tapped into questions about truth, loyalty, and who we choose to believe. Karen, the Law&Crime podcast and an Audible Original, set the standard for telling this story and is exactly the kind of IP that translates powerfully to television. We’re thrilled to work with this incredibly talented team.”