A Netflix documentary providing insight about the man behind WWE, Vince McMahon, has been lingering since its initial announcement in 2020. It was once expected to release in 2022, but then reportedly had been called off when he was being investigated for sexual misconduct and hush money allegations. However, The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, executive producer of the documentary, confirmed earlier this year that it was still being worked on.
At the Bloomberg Screentime event in Los Angeles, Simmons reaffirmed that the film is still happening. He also mentioned that McMahon will preview it before its release, but he will not have final say.
Speaking with the Sports Illustrated Media podcast with Jimmy Traina, Simmons said he expects the series to release on Netflix in “the first part” of 2024 (h/t Fightful for transcription).
I think it’s going to be the first part of next year. Chris Smith is directing it, I don’t know if he’s one of the five best documentary directors or one of the three, whatever shortlist there is, he’s on it. We spent a lot of time on it. I don’t want to say too much….
Simmons also confirmed that it would be “a few parts,” and explained his philosophy behind making documentaries heading into this piece about McMahon.
It’s a few parts. I’m pretty passionate about this. I think people pump…they add parts or make this stuff longer than it needs to be because that’s how you get paid more to do a documentary. I’m anti-that guy. I want these things to be the exact right length. I could never figure it out with my column, my column was always too long, but shaping a documentary is a lot like writing a column and figuring out, ‘I love that paragraph, but I have to cut it out. This moves better if I take that out.’ With documentaries, if someone is doing it correctly, they are amazing pieces of art. It’s not just the director. There are a couple of editors, but there is usually one incredible editor, which we have for this. It’s a lot of people involved and there is real TLC. You can’t think of it like, ‘we can stretch this to six hours. This could be six instead of four.’ I think that’s crazy. This is about Vince McMahon, his life, and wrestling, so obviously, it can’t be two hours.
Simmons added that while he doesn’t know how McMahon will feel about the documentary, he thinks that talking about “the last 50 years he had” makes for a “pretty good” documentary topic.
The docuseries will tell the story about the life of McMahon. But with the aforementioned revelations about him in the past two years, it will be intriguing to see what else the film uncovers about his career and controversies.