The richest man in the world is getting the silver screen treatment. Variety has confirmed that a biopic about multibillionaire businessman Elon Musk is in the works at A24, with Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky attached to direct.
The biopic’s screenplay will be based on Elon Musk, the biography by former Time editor Walter Isaacson. Isaacson is no stranger to biographies of powerful men, having written detailed accounts on the life and times of Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs. That last book was adapted into the 2015 Universal film Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender, who earned an Oscar nomination for playing the late Apple cofounder. Per Variety, there was an intense bidding war to option Isaacson’s novel, with indie film studio A24, which produced last year’s best-picture winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, coming out on top.
Aronofsky most recently directed 2022’s The Whale for A24, which earned star Brendan Fraser an Oscar for best actor earlier this year. Prior to The Whale, Aronofsky helmed psychological and surreal character studies including Mother! (2017), starring Jennifer Lawrence, Requiem for a Dream (2000) starring Ellen Burstyn, and Black Swan (2010) starring Natalie Portman, who won the Oscar for best actress.
Born in South Africa, Musk became a major player on the world stage when he cofounded a financial company that would eventually merge with Paypal. In 2002, he founded SpaceX, a spacecraft-manufacturing company. Musk went on to become an early investor in Tesla, the electric-car company, eventually becoming its chairman, product architect, and CEO. In 2018, he stepped down as chairman of Tesla after he was sued by the SEC for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. In September of 2021, Musk surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world, with a net worth of over $200 billion.
In 2022, he bought the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion, rebranded it as X, and, arguably, ruined the platform. Since coming under Musk’s control, X has lost approximately 55% of its US ad revenue year-over-year each month, according to Reuters. As of last month was valued at $19 billion—less than half of what he paid for it. Still, Musk’s current net worth is estimated to be worth around $200 billion.
Financials aside, Musk’s personal life provides more than enough material for a movie. In April of 2022, Vanity Fair revealed that the 52-year-old had a second child, named Exa Dark Sideræl, with his then partner, musician Grimes, that was heretofore unknown to the public. (They’ve since had a third child together.) Musk is the father of 11 children by three different women, most recently twins Strider and Azure with 37-year-old Shivon Zilis, an AI specialist and executive at Neuralink, a company that Musk founded. He’s also quite active on X and particularly fond of posting jokes and memes, many of which are believed to be taken from other accounts. Time will tell if any of Musk’s attempts at comedy will make it into his biopic.