Four hours. Two parts. One intermission. That's the shape of Alex Gibney's new documentary Musk, and its first teaser just landed courtesy of Bleecker Street, days before the film has its Out of Competition premiere at the 2026 Venice Film Festival.

The timing isn't accidental. Gibney has been on a run this year — his Salman Rushdie film Knife premiered at Sundance in January, and Musk is his second doc release of 2026, according to FirstShowing.net, which posted the trailer and poster on Sunday night.

What's the pitch? Gibney describes it as an attempt to strip away the myth-making around Elon Musk rather than retell the familiar rags-to-riches arc. "I chose to re-tell a familiar biographical tale but to forgo the master shot," Gibney said, per the film's press notes carried by FirstShowing.net. He frames Musk as a 21st-century confidence man, leaning on the imagery of Toto pulling back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz rather than staring up at the wizard's floating head.

That's a big swing for a subject this litigious and this online. Musk has, in the past, gone after journalists and outlets whose coverage he didn't like, and a four-hour teardown from one of America's most decorated documentary filmmakers is not going to sit quietly.

What the film actually claims

According to the synopsis shared by FirstShowing.net, the documentary argues that Musk's image as a visionary genius conceals what it calls a pattern of misogyny, drug use and an unrelenting hunger for power, and that ventures like SpaceX and Tesla. Both of which have drawn heavy government funding, have had real technological failures papered over by the wealth they've generated. None of this is presented as a courtroom finding. It's Gibney's editorial argument, built from what the film calls carefully research, and it should be read as exactly that until the documentary itself is out and can be checked against its sourcing.

Gibney's filmography gives the claim of rigour some weight. This is the director behind Going Clear, Zero Days, The Inventor and Citizen K, films built on the same formula of turning a subject's own words against them. Musk apparently gets the same treatment here, with the film reportedly using the billionaire's own comments about simulation theory and video games as a framing device for its argument.

Produced by Gibney alongside Jessie Deeter, Erin Edeiken, Zhang Xin, Nick Shumaker, Jessica Grimshaw and Dana O'Keefe, Musk premieres at Venice this month before Bleecker Street opens it in select US theatres from September 18. There's no word yet on an India release or streaming date, and given the subject's reach in Indian tech and business circles. Tesla's local ambitions included, that's a gap worth watching.

The bigger question hanging over the film isn't whether it's well made. Gibney rarely misses on craft. It's whether Musk, or his lawyers, respond before the September 18 opening. And if they do, what that response looks like.