Darren Aronofsky, Maker Of Movies About Sad, Desperate Humans, Is Directing An Elon Musk Biopic For A24
Look, in order to write about film for a living (without losing your mind, at least), you truly have to love the medium of movies unconditionally. So, believe me when I say that it's genuinely difficult to imagine a less appealing combination of words than the ones in the headline above and which I'm going to attempt to make sense of here. Hot off the divisive reactions and internet memes that followed the release of last year's "The Whale," visionary filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has apparently lined up his next project, and it's almost guaranteed to be even more controversial than anything the director has made yet — which is saying a lot!
According to Variety, Aronofsky is once again teaming up with A24, this time to adapt a biopic of someone you've probably heard about once or twice in the last several months: the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. The indie studio reportedly won an intense bidding war over the rights to an "authorized biography," which published earlier this year and is written by Walter Isaacson, the same author who wrote "Steve Jobs" (which was turned into the 2015 Danny Boyle film of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender). Musk, of course, has proven to be a lightning-rod figure throughout the last several years. From his ownership of the SpaceX company and automotive company Tesla (and several very public failures by both) to his tumultuous takeover of Twitter (which is going swimmingly) to his vast and oversized influence on world events, there's absolutely no shortage of material to turn into a made-for-Hollywood biopic ... for better or worse.
Him? Really?
Boy, just when you thought "Iron Man 2" couldn't possibly age worse than it already has, you remember that it came complete with an Elon Musk cameo, too. What a world, folks. Yeah, the reports are true that the notoriously impulsive billionaire is set to get the big-screen treatment with one of our most accomplished filmmakers behind the wheel. This is what we've come to.
For those wondering about the tone of this biography, specifically whether it will be as eviscerating as "The Social Network" or something much more flattering and less incisive, a previous interview with author Walter Isaacson by the Financial Times might reveal a clue or two. According to the writer, his plans to write about Musk came together shockingly quickly in 2021. Before he knew it, he was on the phone with the public figure to lay out his stipulations:
"So someone set up a phone call with [Musk] and we talked for an hour and a half, and I told him that if I do this I need total access, and you have absolutely no control over the book. None."
Musk readily agreed, apparently without even doing basic research into Isaacson's previous work on "Steve Jobs" (which the Jobs family famously denounced). Elsewhere in the interview are such gems as Isaacson's reaction to Musk's Twitter takeover ("Musk doesn't have empathy and so Twitter was not a good fit for him," he says), comparing Musk's unpredictable mood swings to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the fact that Musk is hopelessly "addicted to drama." On second thought, maybe this biopic won't be so bad after all? Stay tuned to /Film for more updates on this as they come in.