Anonymous Content’s Nick Shumaker and UTA’s Alex Brunner stepped into Deadline’s Zurich Studio this weekend where they weighed in on the recent ad rejection of Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary Musk on social media platforms.
In the last few days, major platforms YouTube, Instagram and Facebook owner Meta, TikTok and Elon Musk-owned X had rejected the trailer for Musk with U.S. distributor Bleecker Street being told it was blocked due to “political” or “election” content. Meta and YouTube changed course yesterday, with Meta calling the rejection “an error”, according to a report in THR. X and TikTok have still not reinstated the trailer.
Shumaker, who is a producer on Musk, gave his thoughts on the situation just hours before the reversal, noting that Bleecker was “not able to currently support the film financially on those platforms.”
“I think each platform has their ‘quote, unquote’ reasons for doing what they’re doing but yeah, this is pretty fresh from last night and yesterday,” he said.
Shumaker continued: “It feels like the folks who own these companies have an interesting perspective on what the First Amendment is. I was joking about it with [Alex] Gibney the other day where it’s almost like the half amendment now…That’s all I can really ascertain because it was a big surprise because the trailer is not a political ad.”
Brunner, whose agency UTA reps Gibney, said that “we saw this on The Dissident to some degree,” referring to Bryan Fogel’s documentary about the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That 2020 doc from Oscar-winning filmmaker Fogel was rejected by major studios and streamers and Fogel said at the time that he believed it was because major corporations were scared of offending the Saudi government.
“We do as much as we can to support our clients and push through though,” Brunner said.
Shumaker continued: “You’ve got three or four of the biggest social media platforms rejecting a trailer that’s just about a celebrity figure – essentially celebrity capitalist. Being able to tell these stories is part of the bedrock of our democracy. It feels like we’ve got to be as loud as possible about this right now and we have to be as loud as possible – not just about this film but about any film that’s trying to give an explanation to how we exist right now and where we could be going. I think it’s a very pivotal moment.”
Interestingly, Meta’s initial approval system is automated and AI-backed, meaning AI is initially determining if something is political or acceptable to promote on its platform.
Shumaker and Brunner, who were both in town for the Zurich Film Festival’s flagship finance conference Zurich Summit, also discussed the trend of talent crossing over from the content creation space into the traditional film and television world. Kane Parsons, the young YouTuber whose feature debut Backrooms was a global box office hit this summer, was in Zurich this weekend and the success of his film, along with fellow YouTuber Curry Barker’s breakout debut Obsession, was a hot topic of discussion at the summit this weekend.
“[UTA] has been in the digital influencer, creator space pretty much around when YouTube stared,” said Brunner. “And we do work with Curry [Barker]. We do work with Markplier and I think they’re telling stories for that collective audience and when they go and make a movie, their audience will travel. Their audience will transfer. Their audience will be excited to go and see their storytellers put something on the big screen and we have seen that transfer.”
Shumaker added: “Young people are coming with an audience, and they know their audience, previously untapped or previously dormant, and so I think it’s a wonderful thing. And I think what’s even more interesting, or is as interesting, is that some legacy distributors are reissuing certain films in the United States for short periods. That younger demographic wants to rediscover the history of certain labels in really nice way…I find that really refreshing and I couldn’t have predicted that four or five years ago.”
Check out the full video above.
