De Niro Makes Political Spending Claims at New York Screening of Gibney's "Musk"

Robert De Niro said Elon Musk spent about $300 million helping Donald Trump win the 2024 election, and close to half a billion dollars on Republicans in the past week's election. He made the remarks at a New York City screening of Musk, a documentary about the entrepreneur directed by Alex Gibney, according to Deadline.

The screening took place at the Crosby Hotel in Manhattan. De Niro was joined by Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded the Tribeca Festival with him. Members of the Academy, the body that votes on the Oscars, were in the room.

De Niro also referred to Tesla's plan to end production of the Cybertruck, its electric pickup, next summer. The reference came during his remarks.

Musk runs 3 hours 52 minutes, which makes it a long night out at the cinema. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, one of the major autumn showcases for films bound for awards season. Bleecker Street released it in cinemas, and it has taken in more than $700,000 at the domestic box office, meaning the United States and Canada, according to the same report. It is now also available on video-on-demand, the services that let viewers rent or buy a film to watch at home.

The documentary has already picked up an award. It won Best Biographical Documentary at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards in New York.

For many people, the path of a documentary like this one is a familiar one. A festival premiere comes first, then a limited cinema run, then a move to home screens. Each stage is a decision by a distributor, a festival or a team of people working out where a film can find its audience. Here, that path has ended with a film that can now be watched at home, and with a screening where its supporters and its critics can take the discussion further.