You may know Tyson, but do you know Mike? Hulu has released the first trailer for Mike, a new eight-episode limited series which will tell the story of the dynamic and controversial life of boxing icon Mike Tyson.
The series will star Moonlight‘s Trevante Rhodes in the title role and comes from creator/screenwriter Steven Rogers and showrunner Karin Gist. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Gist admitted that Mike Tyson is a polarizing figure to build a series around, but said that their goal was to “dig deeper” into the story “that everyone thinks they know.“
The show is not meant to glorify his life. We were never trying to say that Mike Tyson is a hero or Mike Tyson is a villain. Our goal was to take a very complicated and controversial figure and try to get under the hood of what he was praised and vilified for while staying true to our North Star of ‘no one person is one thing.’
Steven Rogers added that the Mike Tyson series was developed as a follow-up to I, Tonya. “I think the thing people responded to in I, Tonya was, we took a story everyone thought they knew and we tried to show there’s much more to it than just the sound bites the media gives us,” Rogers explained. “Then one of us said, ‘What about doing that with Mike Tyson?’ I clicked to that because to me, his story is so compelling, contradictory, and complex. In some ways, it’s a cautionary tale of the American Dream. It also seemed like quite a ride. And you can find the roots of a lot of issues we’re grappling with today like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, prison reform, mental health issues in it. It seemed like a good time to tell it.” Mike Tyson likely won’t be a fan of the series, as he previously called it a”cultural misappropriation” of his life story
Mike will debut on Hulu on August 25, 2022. What did you think of the trailer for the new Mike Tyson series?