Neon picks up Alex Gibney documentary about Trump's bungling of the coronavirus pandemic

Filmmaker Alex Gibney landed a breakout hit of sorts with his HBO Scientology documentary Going Clear, but he has continued to make doc after doc after doc after doc (after doc after doc after doc after doc) since then. His latest subject has just been picked up by distribution company Neon, and it’s extremely timely: As reported by Deadline, it’s called Totally Under Control and it’s about Donald Trump’s complete and utter mishandling of the global COVID-19 pandemic (the title is ironic, you see).

Gibney has apparently been quietly filming this documentary for months with Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, and Deadline says it “puts a spotlight on the White House’s failed response to the global pandemic and how it could have been prevented.” It will feature “damning testimony from public health officials and hard investigative reporting” that ultimately reveals a “system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of presidential leadership.” In a statement, Gibney adds that he doesn’t think of this as a “political film” but as a “film about incompetence and corruption that is totally out of control.”

Deadline offers up some other quotes and statistics about how Trump has fucked this whole thing up, but we don’t really need to share those to support the argument that he’s incompetent, right? We’re all still living in the proof that Trump and his cronies completely bungled the pandemic, but it’ll be interesting to see how many horrifying new details Gibney and his collaborators were able to dig up. Totally Under Control will be released at some point in October (so, before the election).