In between when news first broke of investigations into hush money & other payments Vince McMahon made which benefited WWE but were not recorded as business expenses and his eventual resignation from the company, word hit that Netflix was pulling the plug on a planned documentary series about McMahon.
But early indications are that investors, business partners, and the ticket-buying public aren’t too worried about the WWE’s future without Vince running the day-to-day. In fact, they seem downright optimistic — and more than ready to leave McMahon’s dirty laundry in the past.
So, Netflix is said to once again be moving forward on their multi-part VKM doc. That according to this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, where Dave Meltzer writes that WWE is still involved in the project, and that Chris Smith, the director of Netflix’s Fyre Festival documentary, remains on-board to direct and produce. No word if The Ringer/Spotify’s Bill Simmons, who produced HBO’s Andre The Giant documentary, is still attached to the “McMahon project”.
Beyond that, we don’t know much. But we never really have on this, going back to when Nick Khan announced it on an investor call in 2020. Khan’s fellow co-CEO Stephanie McMahon said shortly after that announcement that it was a four-part series targeting a 2022 release, but it seems clear at this point that target won’t be hit.
WWE says that their investigation into McMahon is “substantially complete.” Abe Riesman, whose work returned a rape allegation against Vince from the 1980s to the headlines, has an unauthorized biography of McMahon called Ringmaster coming out next spring. And we’re heard several times that HBO’s Real Sports is working on a feature about the scandal and accusations against VKM, but nothing’s been confirmed by the show’s producers.
Will any of those things derail this project’s forward momentum again? If it is finished and released, how will it tackle McMahon’s fall from power?
Loading comments...