Spike Lee’s Colin Kaepernick docuseries could still reportedly find new home after ESPN exit

When Spike Lee confirmed that ESPN had nixed his Colin Kaepernick docuseries, it seemed like it was dead in the water. He told Reuters that it wasn’t happening, and while he was unable to disclose more details because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement, he made it seem like this was the end of the road for a film that had its own battles with creative differences.

The timing of ESPN killing Da Saga of Colin Kaepernick can’t be ignored, coming in the wake of the NFL’s equity deal with the network. And while Mike Florio said the Colin Kaepernick docuseries “was destined to die” regardless of the NFL-ESPN deal, the Pro Football Talk operator and owner suggested that reasonable people will connect those dots anyway.

Those seeds of doubt were also planted when Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that Jimmy Pitaro was open to selling the documentary. ESPN greenlit the series in 2020, but as of last year, didn’t plan to air it for another year and had reportedly allowed Lee, Kaepernick, and Jemele Hill to shop it elsewhere.

So while Lee indicated this was the end of the docuseries as we know it, that’s not the case, according to The Athletic. Andrew Marchand and Richard Deitsch, citing sources, reported that while the two sides failed to get on the same page over the years the project was in development, the series can still be shopped elsewhere.

Which feels different from what Lee was — or wasn’t — saying.

“It’s not coming out,” Lee told Reuters. “That’s all I can say.”

But what he didn’t say was that it couldn’t come out somewhere else.

The reality is that Lee’s options are severely limited. The documentary reportedly features “incendiary critiques of conservative politicians and Donald Trump” and “tackles the history of Black athletes in professional sports, as well as the larger cultural conversation around social justice and police brutality.”

Kaepernick, the focus of the docuseries, was effectively blackballed from the NFL after kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest police brutality and racial inequality — a move that drew direct criticism from Trump himself.

At a time when the Trump administration is putting the squeeze on major media outlets, hoping for more favorable coverage and threatening lawsuits to block mergers, that kind of content becomes radioactive. Just look at how quickly Paramount folded, paying Trump $16 million to settle his 60 Minutes lawsuit as part of the Skydance merger process. That’s the new reality for media companies trying to navigate Trump’s return to power.

You could argue that HBO might be interested, but by association with the NFL, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount, Peacock, ESPN, and Fox, they are essentially out. That leaves precious few major platforms willing to touch a documentary that’s already proven too hot for Disney to handle, especially one that combines the league’s most polarizing figure of the past decade with direct attacks on conservative politicians in an era where media companies are bending the knee to avoid Trump’s wrath.