The documentary about Vince McMahon will not be condensed.
With the most outlandish stories in wrestling often being tied to McMahon in one way or another, a standard documentary would barely scratch the surface of the life of the Chairman. Thankfully, the producer has confirmed that wrestling fans will have many hours of content to consume with the upcoming project.
Speaking on the SI Media Podcast, producer Bill Simmons confirmed that there will be multiple episodes dedicated to the life of McMahon as it would be impossible to tell the story in one sitting:
“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,”
When Will The Vince McMahon Docuseries Air?
With wrestling fans desperate to see the project, there still is yet to be a release date. Continuing the interview, Simmons believes that it will air in early 2024:
“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….”
It has been previously reported that Vince McMahon will have no final say in the content of the upcoming docuseries. When asked what McMahon would think about the final cut, Simmons remained neutral with his answer:
“I don’t know. 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. If you look at him from…strip away all the other stuff and just talk about the last 50 years he had, a pretty good topic for a documentary,”
At times known for his more questionable decisions, Vince McMahon once wanted to fire John Cena for a very bizarre reason.
H/t to Fightful.