Source: JOCE/Bauer-Griffin / Getty
The baddest man on the planet, Mike Tyson, is not here for Hulu’s MIKE, the unauthorized biopic series on his life, and said “#headswillroll” due to it being made.
One person you do not want to piss off is Mike Tyson, and that’s what Hulu and the people behind the unauthorized biopic about the polarizing boxers’ life have managed to do.
Taking to Instagram, Mike Tyson hit the streaming network and the biopics creators with a social media uppercut alleging that the upcoming limited series Mike was developed without his permission and that he was not compensated for the use of his life story.
“Don’t let Hulu fool you. I don’t support their story about my life. It’s not 1822. It’s 2022,” Tyson said in a statement shared on the gram. “They stole my life story and didn’t pay me. To Hulu executives I’m just a n****r they can sell on the auction block.”
In the caption for the Instagram post, Tyson wrote to his 19 million plus followers, “Hulu is the streaming version of the slave master. They stole my story and didn’t pay me.”
Mike Tyson Has Time
Tyson also went to Twitter to share his distaste for the biopic series that stars Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes as the Hall-of-Fame boxer. In a series of tweets, Tyson alleges Hulu tried to pay UFC owner and Donald Trump supporter Dana White to promote the series, but White turned it down out of respect for the Brooklyn-born heavyweight boxer.
Tyson’s comments come after MIKE’s showrunner, Karen Gist, spoke on the series’ unauthorized nature during Hulu’s Television Critics Tour panel on Thursday (Aug.4).
“We just wanted to tell an unbiased story and have the audience decide what they think or feel,” Gist said. “Challenging what people think they know about Mike and hoping that they come away from the series with something else to think about. Whether you like him or hate him, does the story make you question how complicit society has been? That was the intention. That was the North Star for the writer’s room as we were crafting stories.”
Iron Mike Wasnt Here For Hulu’s Series From The Jump
Tyson’s latest comments about Mike were not the first time he expressed his hate for the project. In February 2021, he let his feelings about Mike be known in an Instagram post after Hulu first announced it.
“Hulu’s announcement to do an unauthorized mini-series of the Tyson story without compensation, although unfortunate, isn’t surprising,” Tyson said in a now-deleted post.
“This announcement on the heels of social disparities in our country is a prime example of how Hulu’s corporate greed led to this tone-deaf cultural misappropriation of the Tyson life story. To make this announcement during Black History Month only confirms Hulu’s concern for dollars over respect for black story rights. Hollywood needs to be more sensitive to black experiences, especially after all that has transpired in 2020,” he continued.
MIKE will premiere on Hulu on August 25.
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Photo: JOCE/Bauer-Griffin / Getty
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