Did Elon Musk sign a $13.5 million deal with Netflix for a 7-episode series about his "turbulent journey" as of September 3, 2025? No, that's not true: There is no evidence Musk signed a Netflix deal. The only source making the claim is a website that publishes hundreds of fake stories each day, including debunked claims that Stephen Colbert and George Strait signed similar deals, promoted by Facebook pages administered from Vietnam. An AI text detector concluded that 88 percent of the story was written by artificial intelligence.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared by "The Daily Scope" Facebook page on September 1, 2025. The caption read:
BREAKING! Elon Musk has just inked a staggering $13.5 million deal with Netflix for a 7-episode series -- but this isn't about rockets or cars. The show promises to unveil untold chapters of Musk's turbulent journey, from crushing failures to astonishing victories, revealing the human battles behind the billionaire. Even more shocking? Musk has pledged to donate a huge portion of his deal to STEM education and youth innovation programs, leaving fans stunned. What secrets will this series expose, and what drives Musk to give back now...See details below
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Sep 3 16:50:00 2025 UTC)
(Source: screenshot of Facebook by Lead Stories)
The top of the post's comments included a link to an online article (archived here) titled "Elon Musk Signs $13.5M Netflix Deal -- and Stuns Fans With a Pledge to Fund Youth Innovation."
(Source: screenshot of hotnews.otoarizasi.com by Lead Stories)
Lead Stories submitted the full text of the article to the JustDone AI text detector, which uses four systems to look for signs that writing was done by artificial intelligence. It concluded that 88 percent of the story was AI-generated.
(Source: screenshot of JustDone.com by Lead Stories)
A Google News search (archived here) for the keywords "Musk Netflix" found no other reports of this claim.
(Source: screenshot of Google.com by Lead Stories)
Lead Stories finds a growing number of Facebook pages administered from Vietnam that are using AI to mass produce false stories targeted at an American audience. The "Daily Scope" Facebook page was created in July, 2025, and is managed from Vietnam, according to the Meta transparency data (archived here).
(Source: screenshot of Facebook by Lead Stories)
Lead Stories previously debunked posts promoted by Facebook pages managed from Vietnam making very similar claims that TV host Stephen Colbert and country singer George Strait made $13.5 deals for 7-episode series with Netflix.
