Musk, the Oscar winner’s portrait of the controversial technocrat cum oligarch, will premiere at the Venice Fest in September.

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It arrives at scale befitting the world’s first trillionaire: 232 minutes.

Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera revealed the selection in Rome while unveiling the festival’s 2026 lineup, and he paused to make sure the audience appreciated just how much Elon has been packed into Gibney’s examination. “I invite you to look at the duration of the movie — four hours,” Barbera said.

Few documentaries of such high profile have had such long and tricky trip to screen.

Gibney first revealed he was at work on the film in March 2023, billing it as  “definitive and unvarnished examination” of the Tesla, SpaceX and X chief.

The director delivered a finished cut in early 2025 — only to return to the editing suite amid Musk’s vocal support and financial backing of Trump’s presidential campaign, followed by his stint next door to the Oval Office as  head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

As Musk continued generating controversial headlines, Gibney’s followers project began to wonder when and how the director would be able to wrap up the movie.

World’s First Trillionaire

Last month, SpaceX’s record-shattering IPO — the largest public offering in history, raising some $75 billion at roughly $1.8 trillion valuation — lifted Musk’s fortune to the obscene point that he is now regarded as the world’s first trillionaire.

Musk has been characteristically unrestrained in reaction to the documentary.

Hit Piece

Musk also once tweeted — “Gibney is a douche” — to which, Gibney has responded: “douché.”

Bleecker Street will release Musk in U.S. theaters on Oct. 16, with HBO Documentary Films holding American television and streaming rights and Black Bear handling sales.

Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions produced with Zhang Xin’s Closer Media, Double Agent and Anonymous Content.

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Alex Gibney

Gibney has spent the past decades of his career critiquing powerful institutions and the men who run them.

He won the best documentary feature Oscar for 2007’s Taxi to the Dark Side, was nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and won critical acclaim for Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.

He’s tackled Silicon Valley icons and villains before with projects like Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine and the Elizabeth Holmes exposé The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.

He is no stranger to the Lido, having premiered Mikhail Khodorkovsky portrait Citizen K there in 2019.