In a world inundated by negativity, controversy, and now, war, tales of people and small acts of kindness matter. They may not hold a lot of never-before-seen information, nor do they include the latest shocking thing that today’s influencers are engaged in, but they do, from time to time, tell a remarkably human story. The tale of late Hollywood legend Gene Wilder’s home, and how it made it back to the actor’s family under a surprising turn of events, is one of these stories.
Back in 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he would be offloading all his residential properties in California as a way to trim down his possessions. Musk, who owned Wilder’s house, noted that whoever purchases the late actor’s home would have to preserve it. Musk did make improvements to the home like a Tesla Solar Roof installation and Powerwall batteries, but for the most part, the property still retained the spirit it had when Wilder was still living in it.
Filings eventually revealed that the estate was sold to an LLC whose sole manager was listed as Elizabeth Hunter, a screenwriter and TV producer who happens to be married to filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman, who is Wilder’s nephew. Walker-Pearlman recently shared with The Wall Street Journal that his purchase of his late uncle’s home from Musk had been a rather unique experience. The filmmaker stated that he actually spent summers in the Bel-Air home with his uncle, and his experiences in the house made him intimately familiar with the property.
As it is with many stories involving Musk, Walker-Pearlman’s journey into acquiring his late uncle’s home started with a dose of misinformation. According to the late actor’s nephew, he was initially told that the home had been demolished, which made him mourn the house. But while he was in the neighborhood one day with his wife, the filmmaker was pleasantly surprised to see the house still standing. Tesla CEO Elon Musk owned the home then, and a large party was underway. Quite surprisingly, the security guard in the property opened the gate for the couple so Walker-Pearlman and Hunter could peek inside.
It took about a year later when Walker-Pearlman saw the tweet that would effectively change the fate of Wilder’s quirky Bel-Air home. Musk’s stipulation was perfect for the filmmaker, as he would actually want to keep the property and all its quirky characteristics preserved. However, there was just one issue: the home had appeared on forsalebyowner.com with an asking price of $9.5 million. Walker-Pearlman knew that he personally could not afford the property’s $9.5 million asking price, but Musk’s tweet provided him with some optimism that something could be arranged.
And so four months of negotiations started. Fortunately for the filmmaker, the Tesla CEO proved quite understanding, with Musk bringing down the price of the late actor’s Bel-Air home to $7 million, together with what was dubbed as a “long form deed of trust and assignment of rents.” Even more surprisingly, Musk agreed to lend Walker-Pearlman and Hunter $6.7 million to finance the home. It was a surprising twist on the story of Wilder’s house, as its new owners were able to effectively move into a home initially listed for $9.5 million with a $300,000 downpayment.
It was a gesture that was well appreciated by Walker-Pearlman. “He could have sold it for so much more. His sensitivity to me can’t be overstated,” he said. Hunter, for her part, told the Journal that she is quite thrilled to have the chance to reside in such a beautiful home in a neighborhood that she and her husband would otherwise not be able to afford. “It’s magic,” she said.
Interestingly enough, Walker-Pearlman closed the sale with Musk in October 2020. It was perfect timing since the filmmaker was shooting a movie called “The Requiem Boogie,” which was produced by his production company, Harlem,Hollywood. Wilder’s home ultimately became the set for the film, which is a rather autobiographical tale that features a middle-aged former child actor mourning the loss of his movie-star father. Considering the personal nature of the story, having the movie shot in the Wilder’s Bel-Air home is something that was likely a fairly spiritual experience for Walker-Pearlman.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
Tesla short sellers win big after shares fall after earnings
