An update on the Vince McMahon-Netflix documentary.
A Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon is going to be released and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is an executive producer for it.
He provided another update on the documentary while guest appearing on SI Media With Jimmy Traina. Simmons thinks the documentary will be released in the ‘first part’ of 2024. He stated that the documentary will be in parts. He was asked how he thinks McMahon will feel about it and Simmons said he cannot predict that.
Oh yeah (the Vince McMahon documentary is happening). It’s f*cking awesome. I think it’s gonna be the first part of next year, and Chris Smith is directing it… I don’t know if he’s one of the five best documentary directors or one of the best three or whatever. Whatever short list it’s on, he’s on it and we spent a lot of time on it and I don’t wanna say too much — yes (I had access to Vince). Well that was the initial conceit of it so I don’t wanna say too much but I will say that I think it has a chance to be pretty spectacular.
It’s a few parts and I’m pretty passionate about this. I think people pump, they add parts or they make this stuff longer than it needs to be because honestly, that’s how you get paid more to do a documentary. I’m anti-the guy. I’m pretty crazy about I want these things to be — I’ve been involved in a lot of them. I want them to be the exact right length, because I could never figure it out with my column. My column was always too long but I think with documentaries, shaping a documentary is a lot like and figuring out like, I love that paragraph but I gotta cut that out because this moves better if I take that out and with documentaries, if somebody’s doing it correctly, they’re like amazing pieces of art and it’s not just the director. There’s a couple of editors but they usually have one incredible editor which we have for this… This one’s about Vince McMahon, his life and wrestling so obviously it can’t be two hours.
I don’t know, I don’t know (how Vince will feel about it)… I would never speak for Vince. He’s been in my life for my entire life. I literally cannot remember my life without him being in it so, I think if you look at him from the — strip away all the other stuff and you just talk about the last 50 years that he had, it’s a pretty good topic for a documentary.
Simmons co-produced the HBO documentary about André the Giant. He said verifying information for that documentary could be tasking at times. An example he used was when Hulk Hogan said he did not know if André was kicking out at WrestleMania III and then Vince McMahon would be saying the same thing.
We dealt with this with André (the Giant). Part of the problem with wrestling is it’s — talk about a game of telephone. There will be stories where the stories over the years turn into — I’m guilty of it. I saw (Jimmy) Snuka jump on (Bob) Backlund and miss. I watched that live, and before YouTube where there was no way to see that clip, in my head, it was a 40-foot cage, right? And he climbed up and he kept climbing and now you watch it, it’s like 15 feet. It’s still probably the most exciting moment in my life. But, it’s not 40 feet but as the years pass, the 15 feet become 40 feet in your head and I think especially with wrestling which is hyperbole and embellishment and blowing everything out, it’s really hard to sift through. When we had a lot of trouble with André about even like the WrestleMania III match. Just, okay, Hogan’s telling us now that he didn’t know if André’s gonna kick out or not. How true is that? So then you have to really dive into it… Well Vince (McMahon) is also saying that’s true and then you know, it’s just, wrestling is a tough space but honestly, all these places are. You saw it with The Last Dance. Everybody’s a hero in their own narrative, everybody’s got their own version of a story and that’s part of how you make a documentary.
Vince McMahon is the Executive Chairman of TKO Group Holdings. Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel is the CEO of the company. The merger between WWE and UFC to form TKO was completed in September.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit SI Media With Jimmy Traina with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
