the controversial Elon MuskSouth African billionaire who still has things to learn, not just from the miniseries Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (2022), but of the superior Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017), and who has recently been on the move with his disturbing purchase of the social network Twitter, has appeared in six films, five television fictions and ten documentary proposals to date.
Due to their public visibility, the interest generated by their activities and the voracity of the film industry, they will not be the only ones, most likely. Unlike for former President Donald Trump. Above all, if we take into account that the physical also has financed several films; and that there is even some quite interesting one on the horizon for whose elaboration it will contribute its own technology.
This despite the paradox that Elon Musk ruined an estimable initiative of Nicolas Cage in Las Vegas, according to the actor in Jimmy Kimmel Live!: “I tried to get a movie studio built there and then Elon Musk came along, and all the money I got for the movie studio — eighty million dollars — they put into the Tesla corporation, which then ironically drained all the water out of the town”.
Two first films and an unexpected documentary
To start with audiovisual works, there is nothing more understandable than deciding to lend a hand to your own family. Because Toska Musk, her younger sister, is a filmmaker and, for now, has made thirteen feature films without any relief. But his debut feature, puzzled (2001), credited Elon Musk as executive producer and a single recognizable face in the cast; Susan Sullivan’s, Maggie Gioberti’s Falcon Crest (1981-1990) or the Martha Rodgers of Castle (2009-2016).
Later, he actively participated in the development of the best-known film of those in which he has been involved to date: thanks for smoking, directed by Jason Reitman (2005); to whom we also owe the Oscar June (2007), the nominee Up in the Air (2010) and the most recent Ghostbusters: Beyond (2021). As an adaptation of the homonymous novel by Christopher Buckley (1994), he was eligible for two Oscars; and Elon Musk himself made an almost imperceptible cameo in it.
It seems very striking to us, on the other hand, that he was willing to produce Dumbstrucka documentary by Mark Goffman (2010), a screenwriter on television series such as The West Wing of the White House (1999-2006), Sleepy Hollow (2013-2017) 0 The Umbrella Academy (since 2019), about five ventriloquists, two successful veterans and three aspirants, and their performances in the United States, the Mexican Riviera, the Bahamas and Japan. But, hey, if we talk about whims…
A couple of short films and the most suitable project for Elon Musk
Later, Elon Musk took to participating in two short documentaries signed by David Darg and Bryn Mooser: Baseball in the Time of Cholera (2012), on two stories related to a cholera epidemic caused in Haiti by the Nepalese blue helmets of the UN in 2010, and The Rider and The Storm (2013), about the New York surfer Timmy Brennan, who lost everything due to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Both recognized at the Tribeca Festival.
Finally, in May 2020, the project for which the contributions of the businessman residing in the Californian neighborhood of Bel-Air are most appropriate was confirmed: a fictional film with director Doug Limanresponsible for such successes as The Bourne Affair (2002), edge of tomorrow (2014) or Barry Seal: The Dealer (2017), the intrepid Tom Cruise as the main actor, NASA and SpaceX, whose filming wants to be undertaken in outer space. A future landmark of cinema.