Elon Musk has given $276 million to Republican groups and his super PAC ahead of the midterm elections this July. The New York Times recently reported. But Alex Gibney’s documentary “Musk,” about the world’s first trillionaire, is not a political film. Or at least not for most of its nearly 4-hour runtime. This is a film about this eccentric man’s impact on the world and covers far more ground than the Trump administration or his involvement in the midterms.
But every social media platform on which an attempt has been made to advertise the film has considered the documentary to be political. Meta and YouTube both pulled distributor Bleecker Street’s paid trailer for the film before restoring it laterSaying that its removal was in error. TikTok expanded to 500 theaters over the weekend “Permanently” suspended The film’s account, because it says it has repeatedly violated its payment policies for promoting what it sees as political content, and it reinstated the account after only two days if you’re following the weekend box office. X, which is owned by Musk, predictably did not play ball at all.
Gibney isn’t shy about highlighting this “Incidental” restrictions The advertisements of his film have had to suffer. Their distributor, Bleecker Street, is waging this battle behind the scenes and is quietly angry. The film’s box office in three weeks was just $672K, which was extremely disappointing. In response, bleacher is PVOD release date of “Musk” has been moved up to November 6 After scheduling it for the end of November.
And the response has been tremendous. Pre-orders for the film, priced at $20, are surpassing “The Odyssey” on Apple, and it’s one of Apple’s top purchased titles, even though it doesn’t come out for another week.
“I think it will be the most pre-ordered film in my entire career,” Bleecker Street CEO Kent Sanderson told IndieWire. “People are looking for the movie. And look, in the end it may have been that the three-hour and 42-minute documentary experience was something that people wanted to do more of at home, but it was our duty to try to maximize the theatrical release before that.”
Sanderson talked about the constant frustration “Musk” faces at every stage of its advertising cycle, and says he has never experienced anything to such a degree in his career before (he jokes that he doesn’t expect Bleacher’s second release, Mike Leigh’s “Tender Loving Care”, to experience the same “shadow banality” as this film). Sanderson said that not only was it clear that it was inappropriate to continually remove their trailers and teasers given the film’s extensive content, they found that the review and approval process in communication with each technology platform was not as transparent as they would normally have expected.
“The assets went up and then came down, then went up and then went down again and again throughout the campaign,” Sanderson said. “The tremendous success we achieved with TikTok happened on the initial Friday of the wide release and lasted throughout the weekend.”
Sanderson explained that his team would try to amend the situation by editing the trailer to remove footage of Elon at Trump rallies, and that the new trailer would still be marked. The back-and-forth, he said, was frustrating and “constant”, with much of the content being “accidentally removed” before the next piece of content met the same fate. They had better luck with still images or posters rather than anything like video, but that’s no way to sell a film.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but I will say it was disappointing,” Sanderson said. “It was a frustrating and confusing process for everyone.”
He can’t put a dollar amount on how much the lack of advertising hurt the film at the box office, except to say that it undoubtedly hurt, but he is relieved that the film at least still has some real awareness which has led to strong pre-sales figures. He’s also not naive to the fact that “Musk” is a difficult film for exhibitors to keep on their screens week after week. The film expanded over a weekend when new movies like “Clayface” and “Wicker” were released and tripled the screen count of another feature-length documentary, “You Can See Everything,” which could have easily been a box office hit. Keeping a four-hour movie like “Musk” could mean sacrificing not one but two other titles, and that’s a big ask.
But Sanderson stressed that the exhibitors themselves were never reluctant to run the film, and it was not a fight to get the screen for any political reasons. Despite the PVOD release, “Musique” will still open in select theaters this weekend and beyond. He also assured that he remains in active discussions with HBO and HBO Max about making it available for streaming at a later date, which led people to become skeptical. Musk invested 1 billion dollars At Skydance, owned by David Ellison, who now owns HBO.
“I have no hesitation whatsoever with them,” he said. “If something is happening at a higher level, I am not aware of it.”
Sanderson wanted to make it clear that although there were some people who wanted to see the film released before next week’s midterm elections, it may actually be the earliest a digital release is possible. PVOD rentals will also be available with a slightly extended cut of “Musk” that needs to be delivered, and they also found that the late November PVOD release window is particularly crowded.
Sanderson confirmed this The authenticity of the legal letter sent by Musk’s lawyer to Gibney And the film team said Musk has not contacted Bleecker Street directly. But ultimately Sanderson feels that the repression of “Musk” is bigger than the impact on this one film or his individual film company. The same weekend that “Musk” became widespread No Kings Rally’s Instagram account was also suspended For the same political reasons, and their team is also talking with that organization about how they’re moving that same experience forward.
Sanderson said, “It’s beyond just the movie business. It’s about freedom of speech and being able to put your message forward.” “I understand there’s a fine line, and you wouldn’t want dangerous content put out into the world, but it’s not dangerous content by definition, and I’m not sure social media companies should tread that line.”
“Musk” is in theaters now and available on PVOD on November 6.