The controversial Elon Musk, a South African billionaire who still has things to learn, not from the miniseries Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (2022), but from the superior Halt and Catch Fire (2014- 2017), and which has recently been on the move with its 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 physicist has also financed several films; and that there is even quite an interesting one on the horizon for the elaboration of which he will contribute his 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 build a movie studio there and then Elon Musk arrived, and all the money that I got for the movie studio—eighty million dollars—they put into the Tesla corporation, which then ironically drained all the water from the city.”
Two first films and a unexpected documentary
Searchlight 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, so far, has made thirteen feature films without any prominence. But her debut feature, Puzzled (2001), credited Elon Musk as executive producer and a single recognizable face in the cast; Susan Sullivan's, Falcon Crest's Maggie Gioberti (1981-1990) or Castle's Martha Rodgers (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-winning Juno (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, on the other hand, that he was willing to produce Dumbstruck, a 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 applicants, and their performances in the United States, the Mexican Riviera, the Bahamas and Japan. But hey, speaking of whims…
A couple of short films and the most suitable project for Elon Musk
Warner Bros.Later, Elon Musk decided to participate in two short documentaries signed by David Darg and Bryn Mooser: Baseball in the Time of Cholera (2012), about 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 because of 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 fiction film with director Doug Liman, responsible for successes such as The Bourne Affair (2002), Edge of Tomorrow (2014) or Barry Seal: The Trafficker (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.
