According to Puck’s Matt Belloni, the series was nearly finished in 2022 when McMahon was forced to step down from WWE for the first time due to allegations of hush money settlements for sexual misconduct. Director Chris Smith went on to reportedly add the controversy to the series. Belloni went on to note that Vince McMahon even tried to buy back the project from Netflix at this point after seeing some early footage. Netflix reportedly refused to let go of the series.
Then, when Janel Grant’s lawsuit against McMahon emerged in January 2024, Chris Smith reportedly made more revisions to the project, despite the fact that the series was supposed to release in March. The finished product is set to prominently feature McMahon’s recent allegations, according to Belloni.
I saw it noted in another reporting that when Netflix rebuked McMahon’s attempt, he reportedly went so far as to get Ari Emanuel to try and purchase it directly himself, to which they also rejected.
Now we know what he was cashing out all that money for, lol.
This has been in the works for years, they’ve known since he was forced out the first time Netflix was making this and still TKO chose to put RAW on Netflix… I’m just saying, that moving his flagship show to Netflix feels like some kind of vindictive karma from somebody in WWE.
Maybe they thought that signing the deal with Netflix would get them to back off on the documentary. Which, I guess that didn’t happen, and good on Netflix for it.