Musk, the 225-minute feature documentary from director Alex Gibney about the world’s richest man, is apparently winding down its theatrical run after just two weeks on screens—so says industry news site Showbiz411.
The sprawling doc earned praise from critics on the festival circuit. Its limited four-theater release in New York and Los Angeles on October 9 had a respectable opening weekend gross—each screen earning an average of $17,225 for a $68,900 total. Expanding to more theaters in more markets was the logical next step, which its distributor Bleeker Street Films did last Friday, raising the number of screens to 472. But Musk’s wider-debut was an unmitigated flop, netting a paltry $614 per screen, for an abysmal second weekend total of $290,000. Box Office Mojo has the film’s to-date total up to $571,902, as of this article’s publication.
Though there’s a constant push-and-pull from both sides, the industry has more-or-less settled on giving most films typically a 45-day theatrical window. Some blockbusters with legs will go even longer, upward of 90 days. Once pulled from big screens, a film moves on through the secondary market stages of its life cycle (Premium VOD, streaming, cable). Musk getting pulled after only two weeks would be a rare occurrence, but not the most far-fetched or unreasonable decision, particularly given its lackluster performance and that massive run time cannibalizing its own profit potential or that of a film that could screen in its stead.
But here’s where things get weird.
Showbiz411’s post claims the doc is “gone from almost every theater in America,” save “one or two odd places that didn’t get the memo.” It attempts to substantiate its case by saying the list of theaters on Bleeker Street’s website for Musk showtimes “shows that all 472 were listed as playing the movie today. But no more.” There’s no elaboration as to what that means. The only sort of receipt we’re offered is a blurry, unzoomable screenshot below of… the list of theaters showing the doc prior to the purported change.
The blog also has an unsourced line that “online, people started commenting earlier this week that shows they’d bought tickets for were canceled without warning.” I was able to find a Reddit post backing that up.
But no other outlet of good or ill repute is saying Musk’s been pulled. Furthermore, when I went to the Bleeker Street site, they had a full list of theaters showing Musk, with today, October 23, as the release date. Frustratingly, the list also notes it was last updated three days earlier on the 20th. I took to Fandango, randomly selecting theaters from the list and checking their showtimes for today and tomorrow. No Musk.
While Gizmodo is typically reluctant to publish a story this unconfirmed and from such a source, we’re making an exception here, with caveats, primarily due to a few crucial extenuating circumstances. The documentary has been embroiled in a fair amount of controversy. Mostly, these have come top-down from Musk himself—calling it a “psyop,” threatening the filmmakers with lawsuits, and banning ads for it on X. But earlier this week, TikTok suddenly suspended the documentary’s promotional ad account, only to reinstate it after user backlash, citing “an error” as the cause of the initial ban.
On top of all that, Bleeker Street was purchased on October 15 by the media investment firm Outerlight Entertainment, which is backed by the billionaire founder or eBay, Pierre Omidyar. But don’t assume this is a clear-cut case of class solidarity between two billionaire bros. Omidyar is actually regarded as something of an Elon “foe” in MAGA country for his Resistance-funding charities in opposition to Trump and the Tesla CEO. Even if this acquisition has nothing to do with the doc’s sudden departure from screens, the timing is too bizarre to leave unsaid.
I adore the movie theater experience. I love long movies. And documentaries. Heck, a three-hour doc is a serious frontrunner for my (and many others’) film of the year. I was also one of the coastal elites who watched Musk its opening weekend. I didn’t love every choice Gibney made within it or glean much new info about its subject guy, but it was an undeniably comprehensive exploration of the guy’s life story and grifts. People who don’t spend their days buried in the news might get more out of it than I did.
Regardless of how I rated Musk, I’ll be the first to cry foul if this was pulled for political reasons and to placate the film’s subject. As we may never know if that’s what happened or this was simply a case of a bomb clean-up crew working hastily, what else is there to do but check it out for yourself once it’s undoubtedly streaming in the coming weeks. And during its nearly four-hour runtime, make sure you take advantage of that pause button and enjoy the bathroom breaks us theater-goers never had.