ESPN shelves Colin Kaepernick documentary directed by Spike Lee over creative differences

Spike Lee confirmed the cancellation, saying only, “It’s not coming out,” while Kaepernick’s camp declined comment.

A multi-part documentary about the journey of Colin Kaepernick directed by legendary filmmaker Spike Lee for ESPN is being shelved by the network, according to a statement from ESPN, shared with Reuters. 

“ESPN, Colin Kaepernick and Spike Lee have collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences,” said the statement. 

Spike Lee was asked about the documentary’s fate on the red carpet for the Harold and Carole Pump Foundation dinner, in Beverly Hills, last week and said, very forthrightly, “It’s not coming out. That’s all I can say.” When pressed further, he dropped a bit of legalese into the mix. 

“I can’t. I signed a nondisclosure. I can’t talk about it.”

Well, I guess that’s ‘that’ on that, as they say. Kaepernick’s representatives said the athlete had no comment on the matter.

The documentary, commissioned in 2020 and which began production in 2022, was intended to be a “first person account,” interview-style film that documented Kaepernick’s journey. Colin Kaepernick became a lightning rod for controversy after he started kneeling for the national anthem in 2016 as a silent, peaceful protest of police brutality in America. His weekly protest drew both praise and condemnation from nearly every part of the country and became fodder for sports media, cultural media, and news media on nearly a weekly basis. By 2017, President Trump (who’d been elected in November 2016, succeeding President Barack Obama) had very choice negative words for NFL players who continued Kaepernick’s protest, going so far as to suggest that fans leave stadiums if they saw players kneeling.

In 2016, Kaepernick was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers but by 2017, he was out of the league and unable to find a new home after opting out of his contract with the 49ers. The prevailing thought around the league was that his political activism would be too much of a distraction to the fan base of the most popular league in America. In 2019, he settled a lawsuit with the NFL, claiming that owners colluded to keep him out of the game.

In September 2024, Puck News ran a story titled, “Da Saga of Spike Lee, Colin Kaepernick & ESPN”—the documentary was reportedly titled “Da Saga of Colin Kaepernick”—noting several issues with the project, claiming that Lee’s scheduling issues and differences over the creative direction of the project stifled its progress. At the time, Puck even claimed that ESPN was allegedly open to shopping the 7-episode series elsewhere.