<\/p>\n
Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York.?<\/p>\n
Evan Vucci\/AP<\/p>\n
Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks during an event at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)<\/p>\n
Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/Associated Press<\/p>\n
Elon Musk has already taken over aerospace, social media and the electric vehicle industry. Is Hollywood next?<\/p>\n
The trillionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X is making inroads into the entertainment business at the same time a documentary about his rise to power is raising questions about his motives.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s foray into Hollywood became publicly known late last month, when he invested about $1 billion in the newly combined Skydance, according to media outlet Semafor. The move rattled many in Hollywood, where there is deep suspicion of Musk\u2019s ties to the Trump administration, where he previously co-ran the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.<\/p>\n
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Skydance, of course, is run by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, with whom Musk reportedly has a friendly relationship. The investment comes as Skydance faces more than $80 billion in debt from the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n
Then, about two weeks ago, Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence image and video generator Grok Imagine released an episode of \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d fulfilling Musk\u2019s pledge to make his own version of the Greek epic in protest of the perceived \u201cwoke\u201d elements of Christopher Nolan\u2019s interpretation. The blockbuster has now grossed nearly $1.8 billion worldwide.<\/p>\n
The seven-minute episode, which shows Odysseus leaving his family in Ithaca to fight in the Trojan War, was a collaboration between U.K.-based AI film studio Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Online comments have been largely critical of the episode\u2019s quality.<\/p>\n
Paramount declined to comment at the time on the reported investment, while representatives for Musk at his SpaceX company did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
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Now why would Musk \u2014 who seemingly has no experience in liberal Hollywood \u2014 want to start venturing into the entertainment space, particularly content production? The answer could be twofold.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect his motives are a mix of a profit-oriented desire to demonstrate the capabilities of the Grok AI and a personal desire to express cultural and political reservations about the Nolan \u2018Odyssey,\u2019\u201d Gabriel Rossman, a UCLA professor who studies cultural industries and economic sociology, told me via email. \u201cIt is not unheard of for wealthy people to get involved in film in part as a profit-seeking interest, but also as a form of cultural patronage and an attempt to shape the culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
That culture-shaping aspect and Musk\u2019s effect on society as a whole are the subject of director Alex Gibney\u2019s recent documentary, \u201cMusk.\u201d The nearly four-hour film chronicles the rise of Musk\u2019s companies, his takeover of Twitter and, eventually, his dominant role in the Trump White House, all while questioning how the U.S. government allowed him to amass such power.<\/p>\n
The film is a bit of a departure for indie distributor Bleecker Street, which doesn\u2019t release a lot of documentaries but acquired the U.S. rights to \u201cMusk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were going to do a documentary, this felt like the one to do,\u201d Bleecker Street chief executive Kent Sanderson told me. \u201cYes, it\u2019s the story of one man, but it\u2019s one man who really touches every aspect of the way our society is evolving right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But getting the documentary in front of audiences has been a fraught process, at best. For a time, social media and tech platforms including Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Musk\u2019s X wouldn\u2019t run paid ads for the film\u2019s trailer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is something that I\u2019ve never experienced in 20-plus years of movie marketing,\u201d Tyler DiNapoli, Bleecker Street\u2019s president and chief marketing officer, told me.<\/p>\n
TikTok went a step further. It \u201cpermanently suspended\u201d the documentary\u2019s ad account on the day of its wide release in mid-October, a move that was eventually reversed. A TikTok spokesperson later said it was an \u201cerror,\u201d but the action fueled concerns that the platform was suppressing an unflattering portrait of a powerful tech titan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s impossible for us to say what the impact was, but without a doubt, it has an impact on the campaign,\u201d DiNapoli said.<\/p>\n
TikTok is partially owned by Oracle, where Larry Ellison still serves as chief technology officer and executive chairman. He has a brief mention in the \u201cMusk\u201d documentary in the form of a screenshot text message in which he offers to chip in $2 billion to help Musk acquire Twitter.<\/p>\n
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So far, the documentary has made more than $718,000 in theaters. Viewers can now pay to rent or own the film and watch at home, and the documentary is set to debut on HBO Max in early 2027. HBO is now owned by the David Ellison-led Skydance.<\/p>\n
All of this has raised questions in Hollywood about Musk\u2019s intentions, and by extension, what it means to have tech more and more infused into entertainment.<\/p>\n
\u201cCulture is shaped from film,\u201d said Steve Caplan, a lecturer at Loyola Marymount University who teaches courses on media and marketing. \u201cAnd I think Big Tech has a very different view on culture and creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[122],"tags":[202,203],"class_list":["post-296369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elon-musk","tag-elon-musk","tag-musk"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117571049778370810","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}