WWE first announced during its third-quarter 2020 financials call that they had teamed up with Netflix to air a docuseries on the life and career of Vince McMahon.
Bill Simmons serves as the executive producer, while Chris Smith, best known for Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, was named the director.
WWE touted it will be the highest-budgeted Netflix docuseries of all time, but the previous update from WWE was in 2021. Last year it was reported that the docuseries was no longer part of the Netflix slate.
This past June, the reports regarding the hush money scandal with McMahon came out, and the WWE Board of Directors investigated it.
McMahon would retire as WWE CEO on July 22, 2022, before returning earlier this month as the chairman of the board to help explore a sale of the company and lead the upcoming round of media rights negotiations. Vince is the controlling shareholder of the company.
While speaking on his podcast, Bill Simmons commented on the docuseries about McMahon and noted that it is still in the works. This was brought up when discussing the rumor that Saudi Arabia had bought the company before it was squashed.
“The Rock was going to be at WrestleMania in LA. With all this upheaval and all this stuff happening, let’s say they did try to go private and try to sell it to the Saudis. The Rock’s going to be at WrestleMania? This is going to dramatically change their business. There are things that they won’t be able to get away with, not to mention Vince hasn’t really spoken publicly about all the allegations and the NDAs that he signed and just all that stuff. We haven’t heard him talk about it. He can say, ‘I took a break.’ We probably won’t (hear him talk about it). That’s why I feel like he’s coming back to sell it, and then he’s out.
He probably just wants to cash in. I think it really probably did bother him, though, that things were going so well without him. Think about that. He’s had this thing. I’m working on this massive docuseries right now about him, which is, obviously, that keeps evolving. This guy has been doing this since 1976. This is his. This was a local promotion that he blew up into a whole thing, and I think he honestly kind of lost it, that it was doing well without him. You have something for five decades, and then, ‘Oh, it’s gonna fall apart now.’ It’s kind of like what we were talking about with Dana White. No, actually, it’s not going to fall apart. It’s doing better.”
