A24 optioned Walter Issacson’s new biography of Musk, the controversial CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which will be turned into a film adaptation. Aronofsky is set to direct and produce the film with his production company Protozoa Pictures.
Aronofsky previously partnered with A24 on The Whale, for which star Brendan Fraser earned an Academy Award. The book option deal is understood to have been highly competitive with top studios and filmmakers in the running.
Published by Simon & Schuster, Issacson’s book explores the 52-year-old’s upbringing in South Africa by a “charismatic fantasist” engineer father, Errol Musk, and dietician mother, Maye Musk, who now moonlights as a model.
Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years and attended his meetings, toured his companies’ factories and spent hours interviewing Musk and his family, friends, colleagues and apparent adversaries. By 2022, Tesla had sold one million electric cars and SpaceX launched 31 rockets into space.
Another of Issacson’s books about a tech pioneer, this time about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was turned into a titular movie with Michael Fassbender playing the Apple CEO, and Danny Boyle directing a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.
The script based on Isaacson‘s biography focused on three presentations Jobs gave that defined his life and his role at Apple.
