UPDATE [25/07/2022]: Now that it’s only a month away, Hulu has released a full official trailer for its eight-episode Mike Tyson series, Mike. Offering us a closer look at Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes as Iron Mike, the stylish and flamboyant trailer gives us a fairly comprehensive idea of what to expect as the series charts the rise and fall of Mike Tyson, from his childhood and early days fighting out of Catskill to his time in prison and aggressive pursuit of becoming the heavyweight boxing champion.
With Harvey Keitel as boxing trainer Cus D’Amato and Russell Hornsby as Don King, it looks like we’ll get a life-spanning look at the boxing icon with the new Hulu series, which Tyson has famously tried to stop. And although it’s an unauthorised biography, the new Mike trailer matches the ferocity you’d expect from a show about Mike Tyson. There seems to be plenty of polish on it as well, with Hulu obviously clean to capitalise on the impressive momentum that’s been pushing the network so far this year, fueled mostly by culinary drama The Bear.
We’ll see if the Mike Tyson series trailer is the real deal when the show premieres on August 25th.
Original Article – Hulu Releases Official Teaser Trailer For Mike Tyson TV Show ‘Mike’
While the actual legend himself is busy selling weed gummies shaped like ears, Hulu has revealed an official teaser trailer for the network’s highly-anticipated scripted Mike Tyson TV show ahead of its release later this year. Mike, a new eight-episode biographical series from Hulu and I, Tonya screenwriter Steven Rogers, will chronicle the complicated life, success and struggles of the heavyweight champion boxer and unimpeachable sports icon. We already knew that this would be a no-holds-barred look at Tyson’s boxing career and personal life, but actually seeing it come together for the first time really drills home the excitement that has surrounded the impending miniseries – which arrives on August 25th, 2022 – for months now.
“An unauthorized and no-holds-barred look at the life of Mike Tyson,” is how Hulu has been marketing Mike, which stars Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes as the endlessly controversial athlete. Other confirmed cast members include the legendary Harvey Keitel (Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction) as Tyson’s boxing coach, Russell Hornsby (Lincoln Heights, In Treatment) as boxing promoter Don King, Laura Harrier (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as Robin Givens – Tyson’s first wife – and Li Eubanks (If Not Now, When?) as Desiree Washington who Tyson was convicted of sexually assaulting in the early 1990s.
RELATED: 12-Year-Old Mike Tyson Would Beat Up Kids His Own Age… Then Fight Their Dads
The word “unauthorized” isn’t to be taken lightly. The Hulu project was originally titled Iron Mike and has already drawn the ire of Mike Tyson himself, who last year accused the Hulu show of being “tone-deaf” and “stealing a black man’s story.” And while Tyson doesn’t himself approve of the eight-episode limited series, he is putting his name on a completely different project that will take a similar look at his life, with possible involvement from Jamie Foxx, Anthony Fuqua and Martin Scorsese.
Karin Gist serves as the Hulu series showrunner and executive producer along with Claire Brown and I, Tonya crew members Craig Gillespie, Bryan Unkeless, Scott Morgan, Tom Ackerley and Margot Robbie. Given the complex and artful way the team approached Tonya Harding’s biographical film, clearly, Mike is in very promising hands and should easily satiate the demand for sports bios that have been trending ever since 2020’s The Last Dance took a very detailed look at the life of Michael Jordan.
Through the lens of Mike Tyson’s life, Mike will reportedly be rife with social commentary, exploring the issues of class, race and fame in America along with the power of media, misogyny and the promise of the American Dream. All of these are factors that came to influence the trajectory of Mike Tyson’s life both inside and outside of the ring, giving Rogers plenty of material to work with across what seems like a very modest amount of episodes.
RELATED: Jamie Foxx To Play Mike Tyson In Series Produced By Martin Scorsese
And while Tyson’s life has been complicated enough, to say the very least, to fill several feature-length movies, it’ll be interesting to see how all of this is focused into eight episodes while remaining cohesive and balanced.
“We have a strategy of taking a modern lens and applying it to stories and figures of popular culture of the past,” said Craig Erwich, President of ABC Entertainment & Hulu Originals.
“We’ve had a lot of success doing that and I think it reveals interesting things, not just about where we’ve been but where we are so we’re looking forward to continuing the creative conversations [around Mike].”
As showrunner, Gist has already explained to Entertainment Weekly that the series is not meant to glorify the life of Mike Tyson, but isn’t an indictment on the athlete either. It will take in the complexities of his life without taking sides, rather presenting Mike Tyson as the complicated figure he is, from flashbacks of his childhood – which we see in the Mike trailer – to his dominance in the boxing ring.
Mike will debut on Hulu on August 25th, 2022. You can watch the Mike Tyson series trailer above.
