From the twisted mind of Darren Aronofsky, a biopic about the twisted mind of Elon Musk
Darren Aronofsky will direct an adaptation of Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk for A24
Aux News Elon Musk
If there had to be a biopic about Elon Musk (does there have to be?), it might as well be some messed up, off-putting psychological horror show. At least, that’s what one would assume the Darren Aronofsky version of Musk’s life will be. The filmmaker behind such twisted classics as Requiem For A Dream, mother!, and most recently The Whale has reportedly signed on to direct a new film about Musk for A24, and, well, he certainly has a lot of material to work with for this one.
The material specifically comes from Walter Isaacson’s recent best-selling biography Elon Musk. According to Variety, indie studio A24 won a heated bidding war for the rights to adapt the script. Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs was adapted for the screen back in 2015 starring Michael Fassbender. (In a Q&A attended by The A.V. Club, Isaacson said Musk’s desire to share a biographer with vaunted geniuses like Jobs and Albert Einstein was part of the reason he agreed to give Isaacson such unprecedented access to his life.)
Isaacson spent years shadowing Musk to write his book, which contains insight into his businesses, his abusive childhood, and the intricacies of his love life. Following publication, the biography made headlines for the reveal that Musk had welcomed a third child with his on-again off-again partner Grimes. Meanwhile, Isaacson also wrote how Grimes was completely unaware that Musk was having twins with his employee Shivon Zilis; at one point, pregnant Grimes and Zilis were both at the same Austin hospital at the same time while Grimes had no idea about Zilis’ condition. The situation saw Isaacson entangled in Musk’s romantic drama. After posting a picture from the book of Musk, Zilis, and the twins on Twitter/X, Grimes tweeted at the author, “Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer. I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart.”
Again, there’s a lot of material here available for adaptation. Plus, Musk’s story aligns with some of Aronofsky’s previous interests: a guy who may or may not be spiraling into drug use (Requiem), who is obsessed with his own success possibly to the point of madness (Black Swan), whose kid apparently hates him (The Whale). When it comes to artist and muse, this might actually be a perfect fit.
55 Comments
Why? We already have Glass Onion.
Are you saying…the Walrus was Elon?
I cannot imagine a movie that I have less interest in watching.
Someone didn’t see the trailer for “Bad Dads”
“Dead Buds”?
Bad Dad is an appropriate choice to title the Musk biographical film.
This will give work to hundreds of Black actors as they’ll be needed to portray the slaves toiling in his childhood Apartheid emerald mine.
nice.
Unless this movie is just a conga line of people punching and kicking Elon Musk in the genitals, I’ll pass.
And that’s what I struggle with. Why make this movie? Musk hasn’t ever done anything noteworthy besides his weird pregnancy kink.
People will sometimes cite Tesla’s advancement of EVs or SpaceX’s drastic reduction in cost-per-kg-to-orbit, but it’s unclear at best to what degree Musk himself is actually responsible for or even contributed toward those things. He’s very loud and good at taking credit for things, but there’s no way he did all of these things himself, which means lots of other people were involved, and it seems likely (given his evident foolishness) that there are other movers and shakers we don’t hear about because Elongated Muskrat sucks all the oxygen out of the room.
“OW! My Sack!” — page 1 of the script
“Mom . . .
Sometimes you feel like a nut…
Photocopy page 1 two hundred times. Collect Oscar.
This would be a Barbie-like runaway hit and cultural phenomenon.
Yeah I have a feeling that even if the movie portrays some flaws he’s definitely gonna come out looking good in the end, which is not what I want from an Elon movie.
I have no idea what to expect from this. The obvious choice would have been David Fincher.
Elon should be played by Andy Serkis in full mo-cap regalia.
“What’s ‘taters’, eh precious? What’s ‘taters’?”
“Nasty, sneaking pedoses!”
Oh great, let’s give him even more attention.
I gotta wonder if a certain sick troll is going to dump a whole bunch more porn in the thread, just because he got away with it on Jezebel.
Really? Who?
We wont be there.
Yuck. That shitty book that he basically controlled and thinks makes him look cool doesn’t deserve it. No thanks.
Well, Mr. Musk has repeatedly shown he’s got kind of a tin ear about what makes him look “cool”.
I have generally been OK with Aronofsky’s weird morality plays, but The Whale is a littel more difficult. I started watching it and the performances are string all around, but the many scenes where the protagonist is shown eating some obscene amount of food (as if to say, “Look! Fatty has no self-control!”) usually prompt me to stop watching at some point. I’ve dealt with weight issues my entire life, so you might call this projecting, but it just bothers me to see complex health issues boiled down to a personal failing. Self-control is not the exclusive reason I ended up this way and I suspect this is true of many fat people.
Try not eating, fatty.
You’re tipnig is . . . xxxkwizit!
I try to keep my composition as error-free as the AVC editing standards.
Way to set that bar!
I haven’t seen that movie and now I won’t. I can’t imagine how Fraser must have felt about those scenes. I dealt with eating disorders in my youth and those issues had less to do with food than with so many other trauma-based factors. But I suspect Aronofsky is far too precious to let unpleasant realities interfere with his bizarre personal ‘visions’. I found his take on a ballerina’s ‘dark issues’ insulting and, as you are suggesting, over-simplified.
The Stink of Musk starring Barry Keoghan as Elon. Can’t wait.
Are you kidding me? This sounds like a joke.Darren has the opportunity to do something very funny with this, at least.
love to see a movie about the least charismatic loser ever.
He’s like Steve Jobs but for idiots. What would even be worth saying about the guy?
I mean Steve Jobs is kinda Steve Jobs for idiots.
There should be a law that says you can’t get a biopic until you’re dead. Elon still has so many more rakes to trip on and this movie will miss those.
Wait, you’re sayin’ there’s a chance he carks it between now and production?
Does he die, you mean? Nah, I don’t think that, I think that he’ll inevitably do/say some more dumb shit though. Twitter is still hemorrhaging money, they’ll miss the fun when he has to sell it in shame.
Dammit. I’m actually kinda morbidly curious. It’s Musk. You know gonna be revisionist as hell. I’ll bet Thiel begs him to save PayPal, Musk shows them all how to code properly. Eberhard and Tarpenning will come to him with some insurmountable EV engineering problem, and Musk sketches out a solution on a Subway napkin.I’ll bet there’s a scene where he gives a presentation to some enraptured NASA guys. Oh, and I hope Amber Heard plays Grimes.And then I hope Will Ferrell or Sacha Baron Cohen does a complete piss-take of it two years later that destroys it at the box office, gets hashtagged to hell on Twitter, and Musk bans anyone who posts a meme of it.
we can only hope…
I am all for this law and want to see this movie made now even more. They just need to wrap up one loose end
Elon on the phone with Aronofsky: “When does the movie start production?”Aronofsky across the street on a roof with sniper rifle in hand: “Soon, Mr. Musk… very soon”
Nah, we need the ability to publish art about shitty people while they’re still alive and we can potentially affect public opinion of them. Also, just because because this movie will “miss those” doesn’t mean no other movies can be made about him in the future.
I hate this, but I suppose at the very least a biopic might help people know Elon didn’t found Tesla, no matter how much he tries to pretend he did.
Also they can show his tragic childhood where he had to take emeralds from his dad and sell them to a New York jewelry “just to have a “little” spending money while in the city”
(In a Q&A attended by The A.V. Club, Isaacson said Musk’s desire to share a biographer with vaunted geniuses like Jobs and Albert Einstein was part of the reason he agreed to give Isaacson such unprecedented access to his life.)Of course this asshole would for these reasons.
Like Musk, Aronofsky produces shiny,ugly products without any substance,so he is a good choice
Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer. I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart.Whatever happened to “we respect power”?
Sounds like a neat combo actually.
Thank god Isaacson could get paid again for something he never should have done because there’s nothing interesting, complex, or unknown about this asshole