Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has moved to foreclose on Gene Wilder’s former home in Los Angeles after the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory star’s nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, bought the Bel-Air house in 2020.
Walker-Pearlman, however, is showing no animosity toward Musk, and looks to be cooperating in the legal procedure around his property. “I have absolutely no ill will towards Elon, quite the opposite. He gave me an opportunity to (along with my wife’s support) reclaim and restore this house as Gene, Gilda and I experienced it,” he said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
Four years ago, Musk sold the Los Angeles home at 10930 Chalon Road with four bedrooms and five bathrooms for $7 million, but only after lending Walker-Pearlman $6.7 million to complete the purchase so he and his wife could return to a home he’d also known in his childhood.
“It was an opportunity that allowed me to film my autobiographical movie, The Requiem Boogie, in the house where so many childhood memories in it actually took place. It has been a very special and magical four years. Collectively and in coordination with Mr. Musk and his team, we took the steps we are taking now,” he added in his statement.
Wilder, best known for his work in films such as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, died in 2016 at age 83, years after living in the Bel-Air house with wife Gilda Radner.
Wilder sold the Bel-Air home for $2.725 million in 2007. Musk later bought the house in 2013 for $6.75 million but seven years later was looking to unload properties. The financial impact of the 2023 Hollywood strikes apparently left Wilder’s nephew behind on his loan payments.
Walker-Pearlman indicated his home is under no imminent legal threat as Musk “never said he was foreclosing or set any sort of date. I believe some of his team filed some necessary paperwork to protect his interests and that is more than understandable. Our relationship with him is cooperative and communicated, and one of gratitude,” he said.
Walker-Pearlman added that he and his wife had made loan payments over the years, but Musk is still owed money and deserves to be made whole. “I am a spiritually ethical person or would like to think so, and after several years of living between the past and the present, and in a form of dream world in my childhood home, I believed it was time to move to the next chapter.”
