Variety has confirmed that A24 is working on an Elon Musk biopic, with Darren Aronofsky attached to helm the film.
The screenplay will be based on Walter Isaacson’s official biography of the controversial tech mogul, which was released in September. The 2015 Steve Jobs movie from Universal, starring Michael Fassbender as the Apple CEO, was an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s book.
Variety has heard from sources that there was fierce competition between studios and filmmakers to option Isaacson’s book, with A24 emerging victorious at the end of a bidding war. The Oscar-nominated film “The Whale,” starring Brendan Fraser, was most recently directed by Aronofsky, who is renowned for his surrealistic and frequently psychologically charged films.
“Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “Black Swan” (2010), and “Mother!” (2017) are just a few of his previous credits. Aronofsky was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director for his work on “Black Swan,” and Portman ultimately took home the best actress prize.
Issacson’s book explores Elon Musk’s life
The 52-year-old was raised in South Africa by her “charismatic fantasist” father, Errol Musk, an engineer, and her dietician mother, Maye Musk, who also works as a model. Issacson’s book, which was published by Simon & Schuster, details their upbringing.
For two years, Isaacson followed Musk around, going to his meetings, touring the factories run by his companies, and spending hours interviewing Musk and his friends, family, coworkers, and even opponents. One million electric vehicles had been sold by Tesla by 2022, and SpaceX had sent 31 rockets into space.
Another of Issacson’s books about a tech pioneer, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, was made into a movie with the same name, directed by Danny Boyle from an Aaron Sorkin screenplay and starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs.
The screenplay, which was inspired by Isaacson’s biography, concentrated on three speeches that Steve Jobs made that shaped his career and position at Apple.
Darren Aronofsky is venturing into live theatres
A new live theater-focused joint venture between Protozoa Pictures, owned by Darren Aronofsky, and the Los Angeles Media Fund will involve the commissioning and production of new works.
The initiative, called the LAMF/Protozoa Theater Fund, has commissioned its first three works from three different artists: Sarah Einspanier, whose play Lunch Bunch ran Off-Broadway this past spring; Sylvia Khoury, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Selling Kabul; and James Ijames, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his play, Fat Ham.
Larger productions will also be supported and co-produced by the fund. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan starred in the springtime Broadway production of The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, which was co-produced by Protozoa and the Los Angeles Media Fund.
Aronofsky’s The Whale was produced by Protozoa Pictures, which also worked with playwright Samuel D. Hunter on the movie version. Additionally, the company produced the television series Kindred on FX, which was adapted from the novel by Octavia Butler by playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins. The first movie made for The Sphere in Las Vegas, Postcard From Earth, was most recently directed by Aronofsky.
A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Paul Mescal, and A Doll’s House, starring Jessica Chastain, were among the Broadway, West End, and touring productions of the 2019 Oklahoma! Revival that the Los Angeles Media Fund co-produced. They are currently working on Crazy For You for the West End and Magic Mike Live’s North American tour.
Luke Rodgers from LAMF and Brendan Naylor from Protozoa will be in charge of the day-to-day management of the joint venture.
Musk first gained notoriety in 2002 when he established SpaceX, a firm that manufactures spacecraft. He was also one of the first investors in Tesla, rising through the ranks to become CEO, product architect, and chairman of the automotive behemoth (a role he left in 2018 due to an SEC lawsuit). The most recent was when Musk controversially decided to pay $44 billion to acquire Twitter and rename it X.
