Musk documentary leads crowded indie weekend in New York and Los Angeles
A nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk is opening in only four cinemas in New York and Los Angeles.
Musk, from Bleecker Street and directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, runs 225 minutes plus a ten-minute intermission, according to Deadline. It runs that long in platform release, the industry term for starting in a handful of cinemas before expanding if demand follows.
The opening theatres are the Angelika and Lincoln Square in New York and AMC Century City and Burbank in Los Angeles. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and holds 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from 28 reviews. Musk did not take part in the film and has criticised it on X.
Bleecker Street moved the release forward by one week to 9 October, according to The New York Times. The distributor lists the film as only in select theatres on 9 October, with a nationwide release to follow, according to Bleecker Street. Its listings page elsewhere gives that wider date as 16 October.
Weekend question-and-answer screenings with Gibney sold out in New York City and were selling fast in Los Angeles. Listed participants include producer Ronan Farrow, journalist Zoe Schiffer and Ashley St. Clair. Bleecker Street advertised an 8 October 6pm screening at the Angelika Film Center with a question-and-answer session with Gibney and St. Clair.
St. Clair shares a child with Musk and appears in the film. She refused a financial settlement after the split that would have required signing a non-disclosure agreement, a contract that bars a person from discussing specified matters. The film is expected to expand to about 300 screens next week.
It does not have the weekend to itself. Neon's Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu and starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, is also opening in four theatres in New York and Los Angeles. The film won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at 91%.
That win was Mungiu's second Palme d'Or and Neon's seventh consecutive win of the prize. Fjord also won the FIPRESCI Award, given by international film critics at Cannes, and is Romania's entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars.
A24's Misty Green, directed by Chris Rock and starring Rosalind Eleazar, is opening wider at six theatres in New York and Los Angeles, including Lincoln Square, Alamo, Union Square, the Grove, Burbank and Century City. The film premiered at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. It is Rock's return to directing after more than a decade.
Cohen Media Group's Winter of the Crow, starring Lesley Manville, is taking a broader path with more than 30 markets on 63 screens.
What makes this stand out is the queue of films about technology founders behind them. Sony's The Social Reckoning by Aaron Sorkin, a sequel to The Social Network about Facebook under Mark Zuckerberg, opens wide on the same weekend as Musk. Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, about OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, is due in December after a world premiere at the New York Film Festival.
