Alex Gibney's nearly four-hour documentary on Elon Musk got a five-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere on Tuesday. It also got a lawyer's letter.

Musk's attorney, Alex Spiro, sent Jigsaw Productions formal notice on September 3, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which reviewed the letter. The core objection: that the film insinuates Musk used his Starlink satellites to somehow tilt the 2024 presidential election toward Donald Trump. Spiro calls that suggestion false and says the record already disproves it.

What the letter actually says

The flashpoint appears to be a moment where Musk's former partner Ashley St. Clair recalls him telling her, before the election, that he was going to "unleash the anomaly in the matrix" and that he had "10,000 lasers in space." Spiro's letter argues Starlink had nothing to do with vote counting and points out that election officials across multiple states, along with independent cybersecurity researchers and fact-checkers, already knocked down the vote-rigging theory back in November 2024.

"Defamation does not require an express accusation," Spiro wrote, adding that Jigsaw had refused to screen the film for Musk's team or engage with witnesses his side offered during fact-checking. "We therefore have no choice but to put you on formal legal notice."

Musk skipped the lawyerly tone entirely. On X he called the documentary a "boring... Hit piece," went after Gibney by name ("Gutless Gibney's fatal flaw of fabricating a false film"), and, per Times of India's report, described it flat out as "dogshit." He's also made clear he hasn't actually seen it yet.

Jigsaw isn't backing down

The production company answered with a statement leaning on Gibney's track record, an Academy Award among it, and citing a line from The Times of London calling him journalism's "gold standard." The statement frames this as a First Amendment fight, pointedly noting that Musk has called himself a free speech absolutist.

This isn't new territory for either man. Gibney tried repeatedly to get Musk to sit for the film going back to 2023, when Musk pre-emptively predicted it would be a hit piece. Gibney's reply at the time: how would you know? Musk never participated, so the film uses an animated avatar voicing things he's actually said on record. In a Hollywood Reporter cover story, Gibney put it plainly: people assume wealth rules out instability, but the scarier possibility is someone being both unstable and enormously powerful.

Critics, so far, are with Gibney. The film sits at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across its first dozen reviews, and The Hollywood Reporter's own critique called it a portrait that leaves you simmering for all 225 minutes.

Whether Spiro's letter turns into an actual lawsuit is the open question now. What's already true is that a legal threat from the world's richest man tends to do the opposite of quieting a film down. "Musk" opens in select theatres on Friday, October 16.