The nightmare blunt rotation of investors who allowed David Ellison to mash Paramount and Warner Bros. together and form Skydance has somehow gotten even worse. According to a report from Semafor, Elon Musk has tossed a cool $1 billion into the company’s coffers—which means that Musk now owns a sizable stake in a company that is currently responsible for distributing a documentary that is extremely critical of him.
Per Semafor’s report, Musk joined other investors who gave Skydance a little infusion of capital following the massive merger, including Steve Jobs’ widow and Skydance board member Laurene Powell Jobs, who gave $250 million, per Variety. Ellison was chasing an investment from Musk, according to previous reporting, and Musk has actively praised Ellison’s takeover of a sizable chunk of the American media landscape, so it’s no surprise he decided to take a stake in the company.
The Ellison family and Musk already have a few ties between them, and they seem to be enjoying passing money back and forth. Musk previously put Larry Ellison on Tesla’s board, and Ellison repaid the favor later by helping fund Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Now Musk has repaid the favor by passing some cash on to Larry’s kid.
And while it’s not surprising for a group of ghouls to stick together, the pairing does create a harrowing environment for people in the business who are now subject to the editorial oversight of Ellison, who has already turned CBS into a conservative-friendly outlet under Bari Weiss’ leadership, and now potentially will have to hear from Musk, who has happily turned Twitter into a groyper-fied cesspool while becoming increasingly radicalized himself.
That shift is documented in Alex Gibney’s recently released documentary titled Musk, and there are now serious questions about whether the film will get the distribution it was promised. Produced by HBO Documentary Films, Musk is scheduled to air on HBO next year following a theatrical run. HBO was previously owned by Warner Bros. but is now under the control of Ellison’s Skydance.
No matter how successful Musk, the documentary, might be, it ain’t gonna make $1 billion. So, hypothetically, if Musk demanded Skydance kill the doc, it’d have much more financial motivation to listen to him than to pretend it cares about integrity or creative freedom. Musk has been extremely critical of the documentary, which he has previously said he has not seen, and threatened to sue the director for defamation, so it’s not far-fetched to assume he might try to exert some editorial control over its release.
The release of the doc has already been shrouded in doubt due to the controversy (read: Musk’s threats) surrounding it. Universal Pictures, which owns the international rights for the film, reportedly considered shelving the documentary instead of releasing it but ultimately made good on its commitment. And last week, TikTok banned the official account for the film. You’ll recall TikTok is in part owned by Larry Ellison.
Last week, the film’s director, Gibney, told Business Insider that he received promises from people at Skydance that the documentary would air, and even said that David Ellison is okay with it seeing the light of day. But now that Elon Musk himself is actually invested in the company, it’s possible that the promise gets broken.
Gizmodo reached out to Skydance and Gibney’s production company Jigsaw Productions for comment on Musk’s investment and its potential impact on the film but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
