There have been unauthorized movies and TV shows about real people for as long as there have been real people (or at least for as long as there have been movies and TV), and it’s rare that the subjects are ever happy about seeing their life get dramatized by someone who isn’t them. Mike Tyson is even less happy than most people, though, calling Hulu’s upcoming limited series Mike (originally Iron Mike) “inappropriate and tone deaf” in a statement early last year. He called it “cultural misappropriation” and said that unauthorized account of a Black man’s life coming “on the heels of social disparities in our country” was a “prime example” of Hulu’s “corporate greed.”
Shortly after that, he announced that he was producing a separate limited series about his life with Antoine Fuqua directing and Jamie Foxx starring (which, as far as we can tell, is happening because he’s mad about the Hulu show and not the other way around). Now Hulu’s Mike, which comes from I, Tonya’s Steven Rogers and showrunner Karin Gist, is set to premiere on the streaming service at the end of the month (with Trevante Rhodes in the title role), and Tyson has returned (via The Hollywood Reporter) to reiterate just how pissed he is about the whole thing—going so far as to refer to Hulu as “the streaming version of the slave master.”
On Instagram, Tyson posted:
Don’t let Hulu fool you. I odn’t support their story about my life. It’s not 1822. It’s 2022. They stole my life story and didn’t pay me. To Hulu executives I’m just another n***** they can sell on the auction block.
The creators of the Hulu show, meanwhile, have seemingly tried to stay diplomatic about the whole thing, saying that they just find Tyson’s story “endlessly fascinating” and that they’re not trying to redeem Tyson or show him as a villain. An older Hollywood Reporter story quotes Gist as saying that they “want to challenge what people think they know about him” and show how his story reflects what’s been going on in society.
Hulu’s Mike will premiere on August 25, and the Tyson-approved Jamie Foxx series does not seem to have had much movement (though Foxx commented “Love u bro” on Tyson’s Instagram post).