Bill Simmons gives update on Vince McMahon Netflix documentary

  • Ian Carey
  • By 

Bill Simmons says his upcoming docuseries on Vince McMahon has a chance to be “pretty spectacular.” 

Simmons spoke to Jimmy Traina on the SI Media podcast about the project recently. He said the docuseries will most likely be released on Netflix early next year.

“Oh yeah, it’s f—ing awesome,” Simmons said of the project. “I think it’s going to be the first part of next year. Chris Smith is directing it.”

Simmons also mentioned that his team had access to Vince McMahon during the filming of the series. However, he also told Bloomberg earlier this week that while McMahon will get to look at clips of the film ahead of time, he will have no say regarding the final cut. 

“I don’t want to say too much but I will say that I think it has a chance to be pretty spectacular,” Simmons continued. 

He also noted the series will be released in parts and there was simply too much to cover for a two-hour documentary. 

“This one is about Vince McMahon, his life, and wrestling so obviously it can’t be two hours.” 

When asked if he thinks McMahon will be happy with it, Simmons responded, “I don’t know.”

“I think if you 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,” he continued. 

Simmons, who also produced HBO’s documentary on Andre the Giant, continued to talk about the difficulty of producing documentaries on subjects related to pro wrestling. 

“We dealt with this with Andre, part of the problem with wrestling is, talk about a game of telephone,” Simmons said. 

“Especially with wrestling, which is hyperbole and embellishment and blowing everything out, it’s really hard to sift through. And we had a lot of trouble with Andre about even the WrestleMania III match. Just, ‘Okay, Hogan’s telling us now that he didn’t know if Andre was going to kick out or not,’ how true is that? So then you have to really dive into it and then it’s like, ‘Well, Vince is also saying that’s true.’ It’s just… wrestling is a tough space.”