Bestseller Musk biography to be adapted into film

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk cracked jokes at his own expense while hosting US sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. — © POOL/AFP/File Britta Pedersen

A top-selling biography of billionaire Elon Musk is being adapted into a film with prolific US director Darren Aronofsky already attached, production company A24 said Friday.

The author of “Elon Musk,” star biographer Walter Isaacson, had a previous book on Apple founder Steve Jobs made into a 2015 film starring Michael Fassbender.

A representative for A24 confirmed to AFP that it had won a “highly competitive” deal for the rights to Issacson’s book, with “top studios and filmmakers in contention too.”

The production company was behind last year’s multi-Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as The Whale, whose leading man Brendan Fraser took home Best Actor.

Darren Aronofsky, director of The Whale and other hit dramas such as Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, is set to direct and produce the Musk biopic, the A24 representative said.

The book was published in September and — like Isaacson’s previous works on Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci, among other notables — quickly shot to the top of bestseller lists.

The biography describes the turbulent tycoon as a man driven by childhood demons, obsessed with bringing human life to Mars and who demands that staff be “hardcore.”

A hit biography of Elon Musk describes the turbulent tycoon as a man driven by childhood demons, obsessed with bringing human life to Mars and who demands that staff be ‘hardcore’ – Copyright AFP STR

The billionaire’s early life was already well known, but Isaacson focuses attention on Musk’s abusive and manipulative father Errol, whom Musk despises.

The book proposes that Musk is driven by what his former partner Grimes calls the “demon mode”, which, according to Isaacson, makes him highly productive and is common among overachievers.

Musk’s chaotic and impulse-driven takeover of Twitter (now renamed X) also gets a lot of attention, with the billionaire seen as struggling to recognize that technology and sheer will power will not create miracles.

Another recurring theme in the book is Musk’s vindictive tendencies toward doubters and critics.

A24 did not mention any timeframe for the film’s development or release.